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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Not OP. My take is it was far too Bond, far too little le Carré. No problem that they modernised the setting and locations, or the cast that should have been great - and to be fair, they tried with what little they were given.

Trouble was it took a subtle suspenseful novel and turned it into a formulaic and predictable US TV series. It was uninspiring TV wallpaper but in fancy locations. Quality source and cast let down by horrible direction and story adaptation. The best I can say is it wasn't terrible. Nor was it a patch on the old or new BBC adaptations of Tinker Tailor.

I grant that it far from le Carré's best novel, but it was a damn sight better than this!

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OP. This is almost exactly what I would have said btw. The food stuff, was nice. The hotel stuff, was nice. The violence was remarkably pointless. The whole "she's a good woman but just fell into the wrong kind of man's hands" trope, well he's done that so many times now, its just boring.

The Serialization just bigged it up too much.

But the Night Manager novel really is a story about a stylish British tough-guy who seduces various beautiful women in different countries as he works his way towards the bad guys.

The only reason you can read it without it seeming Bondish is that Le Carre manages to make all that strangely bland, if not outright dull.

Bond is formulaic and predictable, but glitzy and absurd. That is what I felt the TV adaptation brought, along with ropy directing and scripting. The book was far less of all of those, retaining some subtlety - but probably one of his weakest books I can think of for characterisation.

The TV adaptation could have made it feel more le Carre, by adding more depth to the supporting characters, and more of the tradecraft and blurred grey areas.

I also think Bond was probably more influenced by the wartime SOE (which had all the gadgets & action) rather than the more cerebral world of the SIS.

Ian Flemming's older brother Peter worked with with people like Colin Gubbins who was head of the SOE for most of the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fleming_(writer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Gubbins

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