Before taking on a legacy sequel with Practical Magic 2, Susanne Bier, demonstrated her chops as a master of the crime/drama limited series in the first season of The Night Manager, starring Tom Hiddleston. Known for her popular HBO original series The Undoing, Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, and for her dramatic film work, including Brothersand Bird Box, Bier has a knack for telling stories involving greed, secrets, passion, and dirty work, and stories in which characters are living amid global conflict or disaster. Winner of two Primetime Emmys (one for Outstanding Directing) and three Golden Globes, The Night Manager is packed with suspense, and it’s a perfect watch for lovers of spy thrillers like The Americans and the slickness of James Bond. All of this is in no small part a credit to Susanne Bier’s directing style.
What Is Season 1 of ‘The Night Manager’ About?
Set against the backdrop of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, The Night Manager follows a former British soldier named Jonathan Pine (portrayed by Hiddleston). Operating as the night manager of a luxury Cairo hotel, Pine is recruited by a Foreign Office task force helmed by hardworking (and expecting) Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) to secretly investigate an international arms deal. At the heart of the arms deal is skeezy billionaire philanthropist Richard Roper, played by Hugh Laurie. Although Richard Roper maintains a charming and gentlemanly facade, complete with charity work as a front, he’s a maniacal man who puts business far above humanity. Jonathan Pine, an ex-soldier, spends every second in Roper’s presence guarding his own security, feigning loyalty to the terrible operation. His integrity is gruesomely tested, but Pine, Angela Burr, and the task force are determined to bring Roper down and save countless lives. Juggling foreign affairs, toxic relationships, and crime schemes that run under the radar, the show possesses a Bond-esque nature that allows the intricacies of the story to remain captivating to the end.
Collider Exclusive · James Bond Personality Quiz Which James Bond Actor Are You Most Like? Connery · Moore · Dalton · Brosnan · Lazenby · Craig
Six actors. Six completely different visions of the same man — dangerous, charming, complicated, and almost certainly wearing a very good suit. Only one of them shares your particular way of moving through the world. Eight questions will figure out which Bond you really are.
🏴Connery
😄Moore
🎭Dalton
✨Brosnan
🤵Lazenby
💠Craig
01
How do you carry yourself when you walk into a room? Bond is always the most interesting person in the room. The question is how he makes you feel it.
02
How do you handle a dangerous situation? Every Bond faces it differently. What does your version look like?
03
How do you charm someone you need on your side? Bond always gets what he needs. The method varies considerably.
04
How do you handle your emotions on the job? Every Bond deals with this differently. Most of them not particularly well.
05
How would your colleagues describe your working style? MI6 has opinions about all of its 00s. What are theirs about you?
06
How do you feel about operating within the rules? The licence to kill comes with terms and conditions. Not everyone reads them.
07
What is your relationship with love? Every Bond has a different answer. None of them have found it easy.
08
When the mission is over, how do you want to be remembered? The name is Bond. The rest is entirely up to the man behind it.
The Name Has Been Determined Your Bond Is…
Six actors. One role. Your answers point to the Bond who shares your presence, your method, and your particular way of carrying the weight of being the most dangerous person in the room.
Dr. No — You Only Live Twice · 1962–1967
Sean Connery
You are the original — and you carry that fact without needing to announce it. There is an authority in the way you occupy a room that others spend careers trying to replicate.
You don’t explain yourself, justify yourself, or soften yourself for anyone’s comfort. The confidence is structural, not performed.
Connery’s Bond established everything — the tone, the danger, the cool — because Connery himself had the innate presence to make something that had never existed feel inevitable.
You share that quality: the sense that you were always going to end up exactly here, doing exactly this.
The name is Bond. In your case, it always was.
Live and Let Die — A View to a Kill · 1973–1985
Roger Moore
You understand something that more serious people miss: that wit is its own form of intelligence, and that making people laugh is not a retreat from danger but a way of mastering it.
Moore’s Bond is underrated precisely because the effortlessness looks easy — and effortlessness is the hardest thing to manufacture.
You have the same quality: a lightness that disarms people before they realise how sharp you actually are.
The raised eyebrow, the perfectly timed quip, the refusal to be rattled — these are not affectations. They are a philosophy about how to move through a world that would like to take itself too seriously.
You have never let it.
The Living Daylights · Licence to Kill · 1987–1989
Timothy Dalton
You took the role seriously when everyone wanted you to coast — and that refusal to take the easy version of anything is the most defining thing about you.
Dalton’s Bond has genuine moral weight: he feels the cost of what he does, he has lines he won’t cross, and he is not interested in the version of himself that pretends otherwise.
You share that intensity. You push harder than the situation technically requires, because you have a standard and you hold yourself to it.
He was ahead of his time — the Bond the franchise wasn’t quite ready for yet, arriving exactly when he was meant to.
You know what that feels like.
GoldenEye — Die Another Day · 1995–2002
Pierce Brosnan
You are the complete package — and you know it, which is part of what makes you so effective and occasionally so infuriating to the people around you.
Brosnan arrived at the role looking exactly like Bond was supposed to look, and he delivered on that expectation with a professionalism that made it seem effortless.
You have the same quality: a smooth competence, a charm that operates like a precision instrument, and the ability to make even difficult things look like they weren’t.
His era was the most commercially successful in the franchise’s history. There is a reason for that.
The reason is that some people simply fit their moment perfectly. You are one of those people.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service · 1969
George Lazenby
You stepped into something enormous with less preparation than anyone around you thought was sufficient — and you delivered something genuine anyway, which is the more impressive achievement.
Lazenby’s single outing is, by many measures, one of the finest Bond films ever made — and he is not a small part of why.
You share his quality of raw authenticity: less polished than the alternatives, more honest for it, capable of something real that technique alone can’t produce.
He was underestimated, and then he wasn’t, and then history caught up with him.
You are the kind of person history catches up with. Give it time.
Casino Royale — No Time to Die · 2006–2021
Daniel Craig
You stripped everything back and found what was underneath — and what was underneath was harder, more honest, and more human than anyone expected.
Craig’s Bond is the franchise’s most psychologically complete: a man doing a brutal job, carrying its costs imperfectly, capable of love and loss in ways that can’t be dismissed.
You share that depth. You don’t hide behind the role or the charm or the suit — you let the work show what it actually costs.
He was controversial from the moment he was announced and definitive by the time he was finished. The sceptics became the believers.
That arc — of being underestimated and then undeniable — is one you know intimately.
Susanne Bier’s Directing Style Is Eloquently Messy
Close-up shot on Jonathan Pine’s (Tom Hiddleston) eye in ‘The Night Manager’Image via Prime Video
Susanne Bier is an auteur director who takes personal approaches in her filmmaking style. That style comfortably translates over into the episodic format that she has evidently taken such a liking to. Bier is often praised for her casting choices, and she has a keen ability to set up her characters in unassuming ways. Her visual style is noted for using intimate camera and editing techniques to reach into the inner workings of her characters’ slipping mental defenses. Her stories often involve characters doing things that they need to keep hidden, and that shows up in the shots of her work, which are seldom unobstructed or clear. Focal points, like a character sitting alone in a room, or something as small as both of someone’s eyes, are often partially blocked by props, walls, and other characters.
Rather than depending on the action, Susanne Bier uses the camera to draw out conflict. Since the stakes of her stories are so sensitive, Bier first allows her actors to continuously make entirely subtle movements, putting an emphasis on the story at hand. Then, when things finally get physical, she pulls the camera back from the scene and releases what becomes a much-anticipated spectacle. In keeping with this style, The Night Manager isn’t an expressive series where actors perform loudly and act outwardly. As the show is an espionage drama, Jonathan Pine and other characters must remain stealthy, slick, and subdued to not draw attention to themselves. So, the majority of the show’s performance lies in minute facial expressions, extensive one-on-one glances, and delicate body movements. As a consequence, Bier’s camera techniques are what drive the tension in the series.
The Camera Catches Everyone’s Secrets in Season 1 of ‘The Night Manager’
Characters in The Night Manager are consistently withholding information from one another or otherwise silently communicating with each other. Everyone knows something they’re not supposed to. Richard is buying arms under the counter from Britain and the U.S. and paying people to aid and abet his trade. Jonathan Pine is trying to undermine Roper’s affairs from the inside without Roper finding out that he’s sent by British Intelligence. Jonathan and Jed (Elizabeth Debicki), Roper’s girlfriend, take an interest in each other and develop a bond behind Roper’s back. Outside the infiltration, Angela Burr and her team must keep their urgent investigation under wraps to protect Jonathan’s safety. With so much secrecy and talking around issues throughout the series, the most important visuals lie in whispering lips and micro-expressions in the eyes.
Major Lance “Corky” Corkoran (Tom Hollander), a considerably disruptive character from the start, takes his status with Richard Roper very seriously. When Jonathan wedges his way into the role of Richard Roper’s right-hand man, this causes Corky’s insecurity to spiral. As he becomes more privy to the fact that Jonathan is digging around somewhere he shouldn’t be, his behavior grows increasingly inappropriate. Even though Richard and his inner circle have learned to dismiss Corky’s indignation, his actions remain a threat to Jonathan’s mission. The distance between Corky and the audience gets bigger as his behavior takes up more space and things become less secretive, particularly when he has an incredibly disturbing outburst at a seafood restaurant.
Richard Roper leaves a heightened sense of unease with everyone by initiating inescapable staring contests and using his manners to make backhanded threats. Instead of directly going around breaking bones or shooting folks in the face all day, he uses intimate, personal tactics to persuade people to follow his orders. However, when his intellectual confrontations and intense eye contact with people are unsuccessful, keeping close to his facial expressions is no longer a viable visual technique. After filling the screen with the quiet intensity of Richard Roper’s gaze, pulling back the camera for his instances of physical violence and verbal abuse causes those moments to come off that much more shocking. Susanne Bier’s tension-and-release method effectively backs the audience out of the action as the plot reaches a tipping point, and it brings about an impressive catharsis, especially seen with Roper getting his just desserts in the series finale.
Though Bier did not continue on to Season 2 of The Night Manager, which was directed by Georgi Banks-Davies, the first season of the series still set a standard for spy thrillers and dramas that has yet to be matched. Bier’s first season set the tone for Banks-Davies’ shift, giving us the perfect introduction to Pine’s character before his eventual evolution ten years down the line in Season 2.
У каноні дорослої анімації «Сімпсонам» належить найбільша заслуга за передбачення майбутнього, але «Південний парк» принаймні має неймовірно хороший запис у…
