The Night Manager Debuts Tonight in America

I've been covering this miniseries with much excitement since it was first announced in 2014, and tonight it is finally here! After it aired in the UK last month and in various other territories since then, American audiences at last get to tune in to the six-part BBC/AMC miniseries The Night Manager, based on John le Carré's 1993 novel, starting tonight. Hugh Laurie (House), Tom Hiddleston (Marvel's The Avengers), Olivia Colman (Broadchruch) and Elizabeth Debicki (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) star in Susanne Bier's contemporary take on le Carré's much loved thriller. Laurie has long been a fan of this novel, having attempted to secure the rights back in his Jeeves & Wooster days hoping to play the role Hiddleston now takes on, and written his own fantastic parody of it (and the spy genre at large) in The Gun Seller. (And according to Adam Sisman's recent le Carré biography, Laurie has actually known the author personally since the Nineties, having met him through Stephen Fry.) Attempts to film The Night Manager date back nearly to its original publication. As recently as 2009, Brad Pitt hoped to star in a feature version. But in many ways le Carré works best on the small screen, where there is plenty of room to explore all the nuances, twists and turns of his complex plots. (The BBC's miniseries versions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People starring Alec Guinness remain high water marks of the genre to this day.) Amazingly, it's been 25 years since the last small screen le Carré adaptation, 1991's A Murder of Quality (review here). After the success The Night Manager has already enjoyed in Britain (where, like the Guinness miniseries before it, it was a bona fide cultural phenomenon), it's unlikely we'll have to wait so long again. The Ink Factory, the production company founded by two of le Carré's sons behind The Night Manager, is already cooking up a three-part adaptation of the author's 2003 novel Absolute Friends.

The Night Manager debuts tonight, Tuesday, April 19, at 10/9c on AMC.

More Trailers for Le Carré Miniseries The Night Manager

What a week of treats for John le Carré fans! Yesterday we finally got to see the first trailer for Susanna White's summer movie of Our Kind of Traitor, and today we get another look (or two!) at Susanne Bier's spring miniseries of The Night Manager! A few weeks ago we saw the BBC's trailer; today brings us a 30 second Hugh Laurie-centric spot from American production partner AMC... along with a completely different minute-long trailer from AMC Asia, which for my money is the best one yet. The Night Manager stars Laurie (MI-5, The Gun Seller), Tom Hiddleston (Marvel's The Avengers), Elizabeth Debicki (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), Olivia Colman (Broadchurch), David Harewood (Homeland) and Tobias Menzies (Casino Royale).

According to an article in today's Guardian, "Laurie said at a recent screening of the drama that many years ago he had unsuccessfully tried to buy the rights to the book. His aim had been to play the hero, Pine, because the story was 'so romantic, noble, stirring and thrilling.'" More than twenty years later, Laurie is now playing the antagonist, Roper, instead. I could have seen him as Pine in the Nineties, but honestly, I think he'll make a much better Roper! Laurie was actually such a fan of le Carré's 1993 novel that he's credited it as the inspiration for his own rather wonderful spy novel, The Gun Seller. While it gently sends up the genre in general, The Gun Seller is mainly a comedic version of The Night Manager. (And The Gun Seller would still make a great movie! I've wanted to see that filmed ever since first reading it when it came out. Unfortunately Laurie is probably too old now to convincingly play the hero, but it could still be great with the right casting.)

The 6-part event series The Night Manager premieres Tuesday, April 19, in the United States. I cannot wait!

Real Trailer for The Night Manager

After last week's false alarm, which turned out to be clips from the general BBC winter preview stitched artlessly together, here is the real trailer for the BBC/AMC co-production of The Night Manager. Based on John le Carré's 1993 novel, the Susanne Bier directed miniseries stars Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman. The Night Manager premieres in America on AMC on April 19, and is expected to air in the UK next month.

New Night Manager Trailer (UPDATED)

After offering a few tantalizing glimpses in their general winter show reel, the BBC have released (UPDATE: or maybe not... see comments below) a brief and somewhat strangely edited new trailer for the upcoming BBC/AMC co-production The Night Manager, a miniseries based on John le Carré's 1993 novel. Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman star. The Night Manager premieres in America on AMC on April 19, and is expected to air in the UK that same month. I experienced some audio dropouts when I try watching this trailer. I don't know if that's just my computer, or an issue with the video. At any rate, until I find a better version, rabid le Carré fans can feast their eyes on this one:

First Photos, Airdate for le Carré's The Night Manager

AMC announced at the TCA conference in Pasadena yesterday that Susanne Bier's eagerly anticipated John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager (first announced back in 2014) will premiere in the U.S. on April 19. (It's expected to air in the UK on BBC One that month as well.) They also released a cast photo, showcasing stars Hugh Laurie (as the silkily loathsome arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper), Tom Hiddleston (as hotelier-turned-field agent Jonathan Pine), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s Elizabeth Debicki (as English Rose Jed, the object of both men's affection), Olivia Colman (as Pine's pregnant handler Angela Burr, changed from the novel's Leonard Burr) and Tom Hollander (as Roper's sinister majordomo "Corky" Corcoran). David Harewood (Homeland), Tobias Menzies (Casino Royale) and Katherine Kelly (Mr. Selfridge) also star. EW premiered a heroic portrait of Hiddleston on his own a little over a week ago, accompanying a short but interesting article about the miniseries.

Additionally, the third season of AMC's Revolutionary War spy series Turn: Washington's Spies, will premiere the following week, on April 25.

BBC Offers First Glimpse at Le Carré Miniseries The Night Manager

It's not much, but BBC One (via Dark Horizons) offers us our first glimpses of Hugh Laurie (The Gun Seller) as Establishment arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, Tom Hiddleston (Marvel's The Avengers) as undercover man Jonathan Pine, Elizabeth Debicki (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) as dream girl Jed, and Olivia Colman (Broadchurch) as drug enforcement agent Burr in Susanne Bier's (Love Is All You Need) upcoming John le Carré miniseries The Night Manager. For fans of le Carré's beloved 1993 novel, even a glimpse is hugely gratifying! This six part miniseries is definitely one of my most anticipated spy entertainments of the next year. The few Night Manager clips are interspersed with looks at future installments of Sherlock, Luther, and Doctor Who, among other returning series, along with Dickensian, And Then There Were None and more upcoming BBC projects. While no specific UK airdate has yet been announced, this reel is for shows airing sometime this winter. In the U.S., AMC will broadcast The Night Manager sometime in 2016. And it's not the only le Carré project in the pipeline! We're still waiting on the feature film version of Our Kind of Traitor, which is in the can but has yet to set a release date or American distributor.

Tradecraft: Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander, and Elizabeth Debicki Join Le Carre's Night Manager

Deadline reports that Olivia Colman (Broadchurch), Tom Hollander (The Company) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s Elizabeth Debicki have all joined the cast of the BBC/AMC John le Carré miniseries The Night Manager. They join previously announced stars Hugh Laurie (Spooks/MI-5) and Tom Hiddleston (Marvel's The Avengers) in the Susanne Bier-directed adaptation. Debicki will play the crucial role of le Carré's "equestrienne," Jed, the mistress and kept woman of peer of the realm/arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Laurie). Hiddleston's character, former soldier and hotelier turned undercover agent Jonathan Pine, can't help falling madly in love with the aloof English rose in a relationship that recalls that of Jerry Westerby and Lizzie Worthington in The Honourable Schoolboy. Hollander will play Roper's suspicious majordomo, former military man "Corky" Corcoran. (The snake-like, sexually ambiguous Corky should offer a scene stealing opportunity for Hollander.) Colman, finally, will take on the role of Burr, the hardworking, much put upon spymaster who recruits Pine for his dangerous undercover mission. Readers of the book will immediately detect something a bit odd about that casting, as Leonard Burr is most assuredly male in the 1993 novel. (In fact, Colman's Broadchurch co-star David Tennant might have been perfect as that version of the character.) Still, it's not hard to imagine Colman as the embattled Burr, scion of Whitehall and the Intelligence Community for her dogged pursuit of justice. In fact, the gender swap (presumably the decision of writer David Farr) might further highlight Burr's ostracism in the Boys' Club atmosphere of Whitehall Intelligence mavens who are all in bed with Roper through dodgy financial ties. (And there are presumably more women in such jobs now than there were in the early Nineties.) The Night Manager is a reversal of the Enforcement vs. Pure Intelligence conflict of The Honourable Schoolboy. Whereas in that story Smiley found his goals of recruiting a long-term asset threatened by DEA agents who preferred a big arrest, Burr's Enforcement agent can't stomach the Intelligence operatives who would gladly keep a big-time criminal at large so long as he tosses them an occasional bone. The Night Manager will air in 2016, becoming the first le Carré TV adaptation in twenty-five years.

Tradecraft: Susanne Bier to Direct Le Carre Miniseries The Night Manager

According to Deadline, AMC confirmed at their TCA session this week that, as previously reported, they have indeed picked up U.S. and Canadian broadcast rights to the BBC John le Carré miniseries The Night Manager. They also confirmed the roles that the stars will be playing. As I'd assumed, Tom Hiddleston (Marvel's The Avengers) will play hotelier-turned-undercover agent Jonathan Pine, and Hugh Laurie (Spooks/MI-6) will play the charming but despicable millionaire arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, one of the author's best villains. (And a role in which Laurie should shine.) Additionally, the cable network revealed that acclaimed Danish feature director Susanne Bier (Brothers, In A Better World) will direct the miniseries. While she's never tackled espionage before, Bier may be familiar to spy fans from having directed Casino Royale's Mads Mikkelsen in After the Wedding and Pierce Brosnan in one of his best post-Bond films, the excellent but poorly titled Love Is All You Need. Bier has two features presently in the can and awaiting distribution, A Second Chance with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and The World Is Not Enough's Ulrich Thomsen, and Serena, which re-teams Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Landing Bier for television is quite a coup. I'm a big fan of her work, and I can't wait to see what she does with the material! I also look forward to further cast announcements, as this is quickly shaping up to be among the most exciting spy projects on the horizon. The Night Manager will run six episodes in the UK, but may be re-cut into eight episodes for America to accommodate commercials on AMC.

Tradecraft: AMC Bags le Carré's Night Manager

Earlier this month we learned that Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston were circling a BBC miniseries adaptation of John le Carré's 1993 novel The Night Manager, and that the production was seeking a U.S. network partner. A bidding war ensued between multiple interested parties, and, according to Variety, AMC has emerged the winner. The trade reports that the cable network is "close to a deal" to come on board as U.S. distributor and production partner with BBC and Ink Factory, the production company behind recent le Carré film successes like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Most Wanted Man. Interestingly, Variety says that "the project is eyed as a six-episode mini although AMC’s run could expand to eight episodes with commercial time included." Meaning that The Night Manager could end up six episodes in the UK, and eight in America. Obviously the episodes would be cut completely differently for that to work (though ideally Americans wouldn't miss out on any content this way). This wouldn't be the first time a le  Carré miniseries has had episodes reconfigured for U.S. broadcast. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) aired as seven episodes in Britain, but was trimmed down to six in America by re-cutting each episode and excising 25 minutes from the miniseries' overall runtime. As previously reported, David Farr (Hanna, Spooks) will pen the adaptation.

The Night Manager is the story of Jonathan Pine (presumably Hiddleston), a former soldier turned hotelier who ends up volunteering to become an undercover agent for a new branch of British Intelligence in an effort to get revenge for the death of a woman he loved in Cairo. Leonard Burr is the dogged intelligence officer with a background in enforcement who masterminds Pine's mission against Peer of the Realm arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper. Roper is the sort of upper-class Englishman completely devoid of morals for whom le Carré has always reserved a particular vitriol, and Hugh Laurie should have a blast playing him. (I'm assuming he'll be the snobbish Roper as opposed to the working class Burr.) It's a deceptively straightforward undercover story for le Carré, but there is still plenty of material for a miniseries. As Pine risks falling under the spell of his charming adversary (and his beautiful mistress), Burr must contend with overwhelming forces in the British and American Intelligence Community who would rather keep Roper in play, not so much for the chicken feed intelligence he sometimes throws their way, but because they're all becoming very rich off of his nefarious deals.

AMC's past forays into the spy genre have included the promising but cancelled-too-soon le Carré-esque series Rubicon, the ill-advised miniseries remake of The Prisoner, and this year's hit Revolutionary War series Turn (already renewed for a second season). Hugh Laurie has dabbled in the genre both on camera (including a memorable guest appearance on MI-5/Spooks as smarmy MI6 maven Jules Siviter) and in print (he authored the surprisingly terrific espionage novel The Gun Seller, which kind of reads like a parody of The Night Manager). Hiddleston has less spy experience, but as the villainous Loki he has taken on the comic book espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. in Marvel's The Avengers.

Tradecraft: Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston to Star in Le Carre Miniseries The Night Manager

This is super exciting news! John le Carré fans have been spoiled lately with some excellent movies based on the inimitable author's books, but in many ways miniseries remain the best possible medium for adapting such intricate, complex stories. (Smiley's People remains the finest le Carré adaptation to date, in my opinion.) And now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, there's a new le Carré miniseries in the offing! (Or "limited series," to use the preferred present-day parlance.) And its cast is shaping up to be top notch. Hugh Laurie (best known for House and Jeeves and Wooster, but no stranger to the world of spies having memorably guest starred on Spooks and penned the terrific espionage novel The Gunseller) and Tom Hiddleston (Marvel's The Avengers, Only Lovers Left Alive) are set to star in The Night Manager.

The last time we heard anything about le Carré's 1993 novel The Night Manager being adapted, it was as a film being produced by Brad Pitt, and that was back in 2009. Apparently things have changed. The trade reports that the book is now being turned into a miniseries from Ink Factory (le Carré's sons' production company, responsible for the excellent recent films of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Most Wanted Man as well as the upcoming Our Kind of Traitor) in partnership with the BBC, whose long association with le Carré material includes the aforementioned Smiley's People, with Alec Guinness, and the original Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The producers are currently seeking a U.S. network to partner with them for a straight-to-series pickup, which shouldn't be too difficult with that star power. David Farr (whose spy credits include Hanna and Spooks) is writing. It's unclear how many episodes the miniseries will entail, but in the United States "limited series" have been getting pretty long lately (as many as ten episodes).

The Night Manager is the story of Jonathan Pine (presumably Hiddleston), a former soldier turned hotelier who ends up volunteering to become an undercover agent for a new branch of British Intelligence in an effort to get revenge for the death of a woman he loved in Cairo. Leonard Burr is the dogged intelligence officer with a background in enforcement who masterminds Pine's mission against Peer of the Realm arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper. Roper is the sort of upper-class Englishman completely devoid of morals for whom le Carré has always reserved a particular vitriol, and Hugh Laurie should have a blast playing him. (I'm assuming he'll be the snobbish Roper as opposed to the working class Burr.) It's a deceptively straightforward undercover story for le Carré, but there is still plenty of material for a miniseries. As Pine risks falling under the spell of his charming adversary (and his beautiful mistress), Burr must contend with overwhelming forces in the British and American Intelligence Community who would rather keep Roper in play, not so much for the chicken feed intelligence he sometimes throws their way, but because they're all becoming very rich off of his nefarious deals. The novel functions as somewhat of a companion piece to the author's 1977 Smiley novel The Honourable Schoolboy. During the Cold War, Smiley represented the forces of Pure Intelligence, who wanted to flip a high value asset and get him to work for the British, but he found himself outflanked by the short-sighted forces of Enforcement (in the form of the American DEA) who would prefer to make an arrest or eliminate the target than flip him. In le Carré's first post-Cold War novel, however, the world has changed. Now it's Leonard Burr who has the author's sympathies, as an Enforcement man who wants to punish the wrongdoer with the aid of the DEA when the now sinister forces of Pure Intelligence would prefer to keep him out of jail, no matter how unpleasant his business.

Hugh Laurie and John le Carré are a near perfect match. I can't wait to see this project come together!

Devil May Care Hits #8 On NY Times Best Seller List

Say what you will about the book (and believe me, I will--in the next few days), but Ian Fleming Publications did a great job marketing it! The whole Centenary hype worked wonders, and Sebastian Faulks' James Bond pastiche Devil May Care debuted at a tie for Number 8 on the New York Times Best Seller List, a first for 007 since the middle John Gardner era. Meanwhile, it's breaking publishing records on Bond's own "pitiful little island" (to quote Blofeld), where according to The Guardian, it's "Penguin's fastest selling hardback fiction title ever." In other words, Fleming's heirs have successfully restarted the literary Bond franchise in much the same way Eon Productions successfully restarted the film one with Daniel Craig, which is great news! Now they need to make sure they don't let this wave die down, and commission someone else to start work on the next Bond novel right away. (Faulks has made it clear that this assignment was a one-off for him, although the project has certainly upped his name recognition.) My own top choice would be Charlie Higson, who's shown a certain talent for the character in his Young Bond series, or failing him, one of his ilk from British TV, like Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie or Mark Gatiss. Gatiss would knock a Bond book out of the park!

The Laughing Prisoner

As a huge fan of the comedy of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and as a spy fan, I’ve long wanted to see The Laughing Prisoner, their 1987 parody of the Patrick McGoohan classic The Prisoner starring British TV presenter Jools Holland. I’ve searched high and low for a bootleg DVD to little avail, and I’ve hoped for the short to turn up as a bonus feature on some official Prisoner release, but when it wasn’t included on Network’s more or less definitive UK edition last year, that hope seemed to dissipate. Last week, I discovered that the entire forty-minute program had been lurking for some time right beneath my nose, on YouTube! And, unfortunately, with a script by Fry and Holland with "additional material" by Laurie, it didn’t live up to my expectations.

While Stephen Fry looks good wandering around Portmeiron dressed as Number 2, and there are a few good, surreal moments like Siouxsie and the Banshees performing Iggy Pop’s "The Passenger" in The Village, most of the humor is not up to Fry’s usual, intelligent standard. It’s more along the lines of:

-You are the new Number 6?
-No, I’m Number 7. You’ve got the wrong number, I’m afraid.

Even the better jokes fail to rise above rather obvious potty humor, like Fry’s comments about Number 6: "He’s known more No. 2's than the gentleman’s lavatory at Waterloo Station!"
Sigh. I’d hoped for so much more... Oh well. The Laughing Prisoner probably isn’t worth your time, but if you’ve been dying to see it for yourself, like I was, you can do so here, in four parts.

Those who haven’t seen The Prisoner through to its finale should be warned, however, that elements of the fourth segment could be considered somewhat spoilery. Rest assured, however, that you won’t miss much by avoiding it. True, you’ll miss out on Hugh Laurie, but he doesn’t really have much to do other than pull a few faces you’ve probably seen him pull before, and clap his hands while Jools sings... and dances. A lot.

But, if you want, see for yourself:

PART ONE



PART TWO



PART THREE



!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!

PART FOUR

Casting QUEEN & COUNTRY

Casting Queen & Country

This isn’t a news item; it’s just me fantasizing. Sometimes it’s fun to think about who should star in the movie version of your favorite books or comics, should they ever be filmed. A film version of Greg Rucka’s top-notch spy series Queen & Country (comprising both comics and novels) has been long in development (John Rogers was adapting as of several years ago; I have no idea if his script is still the one of note), and here’s who I would cast, were I making it...

Paul Crocker - Hugh Laurie. Definitely Hugh Laurie. Not only is he tall and skinny like his comic book counterpart (and more angular with age), but he’s demonstrated the perfect disposition for the role on House. He’s already played a spymaster on MI-5 (Spooks in Britain), but Crocker’s both more serious and, ultimately, more compassionate than Jules Siviter.

Tom Wallace - Clive Owen. He looks the part, he’s the right age, and I’d still like to see him play a British spy. He’d probably be better suited to the gritty, realistic world of Queen & Country than to James Bond anyway.

Tara Chace - Well, Tara’s the hardest to cast, isn’t she? Cate Blanchett could certainly do a good job if they went with the slightly older Tara of the most recent novel and the upcoming second volume of comics, but Tara should probably be a bit younger. I’ve always thought that Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (of Trainspotting and The Girl In the Café, whose spy cred includes an episode of Alias), really looks the part, and she’s a good actress, if not very well known. She’d need some blonde dye, of course, but that’s certainly doable. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a big star who’s more suited to the part than her, and maybe Owen and the suddenly, finally big-in-America Laurie would be big enough names to cast a relative unknown in the lead...

And as long as I’m playing the part of producer on this movie, I’ll go ahead and say what I’d adapt, too. I’d either start off with a script based on the first two arcs of the comic book, Broken Ground and Operation: Morningstar, or else shoot the first novel, A Gentleman’s Game. If all this is Greek to you and you have no idea who Tara Chace is, that’s probably the place to start!

Random Intelligence Dispatches For Tuesday, April 3

Spy DVDs Out Today
Universal releases last year's excellent spy opus The Good Shepherd on DVD today. It's not the expanded version writer Eric Roth promised in November, but it does contain a few deleted scenes (sixteen minutes' worth, to be precise). Hopefully we'll see something close to director Robert De Niro's early 4-hour cut on an eventual double-dip.

And from Fox comes the comedic Donald Sutherland/Eliott Gould reteaming, S*P*Y*S (1974). Hint: It's not M*A*S*H. One of the stranger features is an hour-long documentary director Irvin Kershner worked on early in his career, made for the U.S. government, called The Road of a Hundred Days. In the introduction to the film, Kershner recalls being asked to spy for America while in the Middle East filming! He turned the government down.

New Spy DVDs Coming To the UK
Network has announced release dates for a few of their upcoming spy DVDs. Foremost among them is Danger Man: The Complete 50 Minute Series which presents all the hour-long episodes (which aired in America as Secret Agent) on July 23. Producer Ralf Smart's earlier The Invisible Man: The Complete Series, which was sort of a dry run for Danger Man, arrives two months earlier on May 21. Smart's take on The Invisible Man reimagines H.G. Wells' classic anti-hero as a Cold War asset for the British Secret Service. Both series are already available in the US, the former from A&E and the latter from Dark Sky.

ITC's short-lived The Zoo Gang: The Complete Series, recounting the adventures of a group of aging WWII veterens on the beautiful French Riviera, comes out June 18. Finally, the 1977 UK TV movie Philby, Burgess and Maclean, starring Derek Jakobi as Burgess, is due on July 16. Neither of these is available on Region 1 DVD.

RIP Donald Hamilton
Aintitcool reports the sad passing of Donald Hamilton, author of the Matt Helm series of books. The Helm books were gritty, hard-nosed espionage tales, bearing little resemblance to the silly drunken swagger of Dean Martin's film versions. Hamilton straddled the rift between Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming, and his creation was sort of a hardboiled James Bond. Hamilton died in Sweden at the age of 90. According to the obit, a final Helm adventure currently remains unpublished.

Rumors continue to persist of a new film series, truer to the source material, but any such films have yet to materialize. The last name mentioned for the role was Las Vegas actor Josh Duhamel.

MI5 Replaces Avengers On BBC America
Variety reports that BBC America is radically overhauling it's schedule, and the first order of business is dumping vintage mainstays like The Avengers, The Saint and The Prisoner. The network's new chief, Garth Ancier, said, "We're undergoing a complete transformation. We've taken shows like The Avengers and The Saint off the schedule. We want to present a view of contemporary Britain. It's what the BBC does best. I'd rather have Wire in the Blood than Benny Hill." Part of the new, younger-skewing line-up is the latest season of MI-5, formerly seen (in an incomprehensibly cut-up version) on A&E.

Young Bond Updates
I'm a little late in the game in doing so, but I finally picked up the new American paperback edition of Charlie Higson's second Young Bond novel, Blood Fever. It's available now at bookstores everywhere. I like this edition much better than the British first edition paperback. It's a quality trade printed on good, heavy paper. (The British one had cheap, thin pages.) It's a good size, and will actually sit open on a table top. If you want to preserve the collectibility of your British version, you have to read it very carefully to avoid cracking the fragile spine. No such precautions are required with this version.

In other Young Bond news, be sure to check out The Young Bond Dossier's amazing gallery of cover art for all the various international editions! It's a truly impressive collection.

Stephen Fry To Write Bond?

Young Bond Dossier also has a truly tantalizing rumor today! They report (while professing no certainty whatsoever) that the one and only Stephen Fry might be the next author of adult Bond novel! (A new continuation novel is planned for Ian Fleming's Centenary next year.) Seeing how well Charlie Higson has done with the young version of the character, it might be a wise choice to pick again from the ranks of the British Comedy Elite (who seem to all be adept at spy writing), and Fry is as elite as it gets. Plus, he's a great writer! Although based on his previous spy novel, The Gun Seller, I'd also love to see his old comedy partner Hugh Laurie take a crack at the literary 007... (Not that he has time for writing these days.)

Moneypenny Diaries on Ebay
Finally, for American readers interested in obtaining the first volume of Kate Westbrook's James Bond continuation series I write about so often here, the first volmes of The Moneypenny Diaries is currently up on Ebay for the low price of $3.50. It beats paying for shipping from Amazon.co.uk! For the record, I am not the seller and have no connection with this auction other than a strong desire to see more readers become acquainted with this fantastic series, which still has yet to see publication on these shores.

The Gun Seller

This has been out for a little while now, but it still bears mentioning that actor/author Hugh Laurie’s classic 90s comic spy novel The Gun Seller is back in print at long last. (Can a novel from the 90s be classic already? Read it and decide for yourself! I say yes.)

I loved Laurie as the vacuous P.G. Wodehouse hero Bertie Wooster on Jeeves & Wooster, and when he followed his esteemed co-star Stephen Fry into fiction (a spy novel, no less!) I was eager to read the result. I think it got described at the time as "Wodehouse meets Fleming," which is near the mark, but it might be more accurate to call it a Robert Ludlum thriller as written by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s a legitimate Ludlum-style globetrotting thriller, with a hapless hero accidentally thrust into the world of international intrigue and arms dealing, written in a deft comic style surely inspired by Wodehouse, which makes for a hell of a lot more fun a read than Ludlum’s own rather artless prose. The hero is certainly smarter than Bertie (who isn’t?) but his winking narration as he tries hopelessly to understand each new predicament he finds himself in really elevates The Gun Seller above the perfectly acceptable category of "entertaining beach read." It’s been too long since I’ve read it. I should really go back and read this one again, and if you missed it the first time and you’re a fan of spy novels, or Hugh, or both, definitely pick it up!

If you’ve seen his British comedy stuff, then you won’t be able to help picturing Laurie in the lead role as you read the novel. (If you only know him from House, maybe not.) It was originally optioned as a film to be written by Laurie and star (I think) Hugh Grant, since Laurie wasn’t a big enough name at the time to sell a movie. Then September 11 happened, and it was scrapped along with any other script concerning terrorism. Now that we’ve moved on a bit from then, and now that Hugh Laurie’s finally the huge star in America that he deserves to be, thanks to the success of House, maybe it will finally get made. Laurie’s a bit old to play the lead now, but he can probably rework it appropriately. He did mention that he was working on the script in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, though he didn’t mention if he intended to star or not. I hope so. And I also hope he gets around to writing a sequel someday!