The Night Manager; The Traitors; Run Away; Red Eye

“Nearly a decade has passed since the first series of The Night Manager, so if you are going to resuscitate it after all this time, it had better be worth the wait. Is it? Hmm, the jury is still out. The old slickness and polish is there, certainly, but something feels to be missing. What is it? Well, for starters, its two best characters are unfortunately dead. Look, it is well written and well made and it is too early to judge, but I am not getting that “I must see the next episode immediately” feeling yet. The lengthy recap of the last series at the beginning merely served as a reminder of what we are missing.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Although the drama still feels like cashmere and silk, the blade stashed in the folds isn’t so sharp. There is something fundamentally gauche, too, about the way season two methodically tries to rebuild the dynamic of the first run. Pine suffers another tragedy, adopts another fake identity and, without being sure who he can trust back at base, pitches himself into another game of bluff with another nefarious kingpin who could suss him at any moment – potentially aided by said supervillain’s disaffected moll (Camila Morrone). None of this is to say The Night Manager is suddenly average: it still floats far above most of the competition. But it no longer feels pristine.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“With no le Carré novel on which to base his storyline, returning writer David Farr has said that the idea for the new series came to him in a dream. There are certainly fantastical elements here, especially the way in which the baddies openly meet in parks and hotel lobbies and discuss their nefarious plans within earshot of Pine. What’s missing, however, is the humour with which both Laurie and Hollander smoothed over the credibility cracks in the original series (and, of course, which Slow Horses supplies in spades). This new cocktail of le Carré and Bond left me slightly shaken, but not stirred.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“You may remember that the first series of The Night Manager made headlines over a sex scene with Elizabeth Debicki, which featured Hiddleston’s naked behind (this was around the time he was said to be dating Taylor Swift, so Hiddlemania was at its height). This time around, he is shirtless in scenes where he really doesn’t need to be, so the director is clearly trying to keep that particular fanbase happy. ”It’s not exactly glamorous,” a psychologist tells Pine when discussing his Night Owls work. But by the end of episode one, Pine has dispensed with his reading glasses, put on a sharp suit, packed a gun and is sprinting away from an explosion in a luxury clifftop hotel. That’s pretty glamorous for a January evening in front of the TV.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“This beginning wasn’t so much low-key as subterranean. To anyone expecting a reprise of the high-adrenaline opener delivered by The Day Of The Jackal, the AppleTV thriller starring Eddie Redmayne two years ago, it didn’t look promising. But this was true to Le Carre’s style. His stories always begin with the unspectacular, a single ember touched to the tip of a very long fuse. And by the end of the first episode, that fuse had burned down to the corpse of a gunrunner in a Spanish hotel, with a bomb strapped to his chest.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Having grown the series’ following with The Celebrity Traitors, the BBC could easily have rolled out another civilian season using past templates and felt sure of a record-breaking audience. Instead, they’ve upped the ante and made the format even twistier. Episode one, with its rapid, punchy reveals, leaves us and the players with plenty of threads to pull on – and exudes the producers’ confidence in the coming payoff.”
Elle Hunt, The Guardian

“The Traitors is one of the most immersive programmes I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched the past finals like important football matches, shouting at my screen, celebrating when my favourites win. By letting us in on which players are Traitors and which are Faithfuls, we are given a birds-eye view of the whole chess board – we can root for our favourites, be two steps ahead of the players. Now we aren’t just watching the game unfold; we’re in it.”
Emily Baker, The i

“This show has become a national addiction since its launch in 2022, precisely because its appearances are invariably deceptive. The Traitors always slips a knife in, but never in the same place twice. This time, we had advance warning. In a trailer released on Christmas Day, Claudia teased us with a glimpse of a red cloak. What could it mean? That another pinch of genius has been sprinkled over the show, that’s what.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“I’m sure we’ll all be drawn in, though, because this show is such an enjoyable ride. It’s so confidently and skilfully made that it has become watercooler TV in an age when watercoolers are defunct (everyone has their own water bottle on their desk now, of course).”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“What we do know is that it was amusing to see the three chosen traitors’ faces as they were castrated before our eyes, forced to do what they are told and operating on three cylinders, not four. Yes, all right, I admit it — it’s very clever.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“So much happens so quickly that it’s a mistake to try and make sense of the plot as it unfolds, let alone to second–guess what might happen next. A pair of Bonnie–and–Clyde assassins sit in their car, exchanging offbeat, rambling dialogue that parodies Elmore Leonard at his most eccentric. Meanwhile, Ruth Jones turns up in the park and steals a dog before cadging a free lunch from its owner. Turns out she’s a private detective called Elena, working on a case apparently unconnected to Simon’s arrest. When her partner and computer hacker Lou (Annette Badland) announces she’d like the night off, Elena snaps, ‘And I’d like to be in Bali with Idris Elba.’ That’s Sir Idris now, please.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“You can hardly describe Netflix’s recent spate of Harlan Coben adaptations (The Stranger, Missing You, Fool Me Once, and so on) as high art. But then again, you can’t describe a box of Quality Street as Cordon Bleu cuisine, nonetheless most of us will spend New Year’s Day sat on the sofa, gobbling a box of them. For all its twists, turns, red herrings and fishy dialogue, Run Away (Netflix) gives the viewer exactly what it expects. We came here to binge, not watch. It’s the TV drama equivalent of mindlessly scrolling your phone.”
Chris Bennion, Telegraph

“Show, don’t tell: the golden rule of writing for screen that allows viewers to immerse themselves in a story without being subjected to awkward character interactions that explain context. Now it’s fair to say that, on January 1, those who have enjoyed a glass too many seeing in the new year may be grateful for a little more hand-holding than usual. But Red Eye (ITV1) doesn’t just offer a light turbulence of explanation, it fully crash-lands into a sea of exposition and cliché.”
Tim Glanfield, The Times