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‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 – Susanne Bier won’t return as director

However a second season may still be on the way

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© 2016 (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Award-winning director Susanne Bier won’t be back to helm a possible second season of The Night Manager.

The Danish director, who won an Emmy for the series’ first season, told the Radio Times that she would not be directing the spy show’s second season.

“I’m not doing Night Manager 2 […] I wasn’t sure that I would do my very best work the second time round – so I decided that I should probably not do it and have somebody [else direct it].”

– Susanne Bier

She did, however, confirm that she would still be involved with the production, and that a second season is moving forward. “There is progress, ” she said, “but nothing that I can talk of.”

The first series of the program, starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman, was a critical and ratings success in 2016, winning two Emmy awards, three BAFTA TV awards, and three Golden Globes. 

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Director Susanne Bier (L) and Tom Hiddleston attend Tribeca Tune In: The Night Manager during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival at SVA Theatre 2 on April 15, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

So what does this mean going forward? Well, it’s not off the books. But after three years, it’s been a slow process to pull a new season together — the biggest issue being no source novel to work from.

Earlier this year, espionage writer Charles Cumming confirmed on his Twitter that he had been hired to collaborate with Operation Finale scribe Matthew Orton on a second series. 

Later, Deadline reported Black Mirror‘s Namsi Khan and The Man In The High Castle‘s Francesca Gardiner had also joined the writers’ room. 

Cumming would not confirm which characters would return in a second series. 

Some characters that the audience know and love will be returning, others will not. 

– Charles Cumming
© 2016 BBC

However, by autumn, producer Simon Cornwell, who is also John LeCarré’s son, put a bit of a damper on things, telling the Royal Television Society that a second series wasn’t a sure thing.

“We don’t have scripts for it yet, and we would only think about making a second series of The Night Manager if it was going to be really good.

“And I’m sure that Hugh [Laurie] and Tom [Hiddleston] and Olivia [Colman], who are not exactly underemployed actors, won’t want to come back unless it’s excellent, frankly. And, you know, we have all of le Carré’s body of work to pick from.”

– Simon Cornwell

Olivia Colman (Angela Burr) is currently filming the first of two seasons of The Crown, where she will play Queen Elizabeth II. Tom Hiddleston (Jonathan Pine) will appear on the London stage in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal next spring, before moving on to a Loki TV series for Disney’s new streaming service. Meanwhile, Hugh Laurie has just finished shooting George Clooney’s Catch-22 miniseries for Hulu, with Armando Iannucci’s HBO space comedy Avenue 5 starting soon. 

So best to wait and see if – and when – this actually happens. And who might be in the cast.