I spy: on location with The Night Manager

If Sunday evenings will feel empty once the hit BBC drama finishes, follow Christopher Beanland’s guide to visiting sumptuous Night Manager locations used in filming

With sex, action and opulent settings, spy drama The Night Manager has been a hit for the BBC: it cost around £3m per episode, but each one has pulled in some eight million viewers. Danish director Susanne Bier said in a Radio Times interview: “It was deliberate to make it very sexy. The story takes place in a very lavish world – the world of Richard Roper – and part of the excitement is that Jonathan Pine, and the audience, get sucked into this world.”

Based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel about an arms dealer, adapted and updated to be based on the Arab spring, the plot in brief is that former British soldier Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is recruited by intelligence officer Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) to get inside the inner circle of arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). From there, it all gets very shadowy.