. >> seth: and this is based on john le carre, who's an author i love. >> yeah, i am actually. although, i hear you're a bigger fan. >> seth: well, look, it's not a contest, but sure -- [ light laughter ] at the end of the day, i probably should have been the night manager. [ light laughter ] >> i'd love to see that. >> seth: yeah, that would be great. >> very impeccably turned out. >> seth: yeah. >> a sense of diplomacy. >> seth: the problem -- my british accent isn't good. i'd be like, i'm the night manager. [ laughter ] >> that's actually tremendous. >> thank you very much. >> say, i'm jonathan pine, the night manager. >> seth: i'm jonathan pine and i'm the night manager. >> there's really no difference. >> seth: if you don't mind me saying, i think mine is a bit more nuanced. >> it actually is. it's more sophisticated. >> seth: your -- you sound like everyone's british accent? [ laughter ] >> basically, yeah. just less refined. >> seth: yeah. >> but what was your question? >> seth: le carre. >> am i fan? yes, i am. i think probably like you, my access

he wrote a movie, and then i think he made some rather odd public declaration that john le carre was not filmable. and that didn't go down too well with the great man. >> glor: not the only person who feels that way, i would assume. it's tough to translate, is it not? >> i suppose it is. i mean, he tends to write-- he's writing thought rather than deed a lot of the time. there isn't a lot of-- in what we think of as a sort of prototypical le le carre story, there aren't necessarily a lot of car chases. not much blows up. it's all up here. stuff blows up, up here. although, we do actually have our share of that. we probably blow more stuff up than all the other ones combined. we're quite a combustible pyrotechnic show. it's about ordinance. it's about explosive materiel, and we do blow stuff up. >> glor: but it's a deliberative, contemplative show, compared to much of the television you see today. >> i would say so, yes. it's adult. it's literate. these are smart characters maneuvering for positions of power to dominate each other through wit and strategy rather than physical muscle a

jeff: before we talk about richard roper, john le carre -- this novel in particular.ugh: these are the holy texts of my childhood, particularly my teen years. particularly the books about the cold war. and then 1990 came, the wall came down and i and others imagined that the spies are now out of work and possibly spied writers would also be redundant. i worried that he would have to hang up his typewriter ribbon. i happen to know he writes longhand. he is old school. but, much to my delight, not only had he found a subject that was equal to the high stakes of the cold war, he found something that if anything exceeded those stakes. because the international arms trade is a truly dark -- these are dark and complicated waters. jeff: he changed with the times and you did as well to update the story for modern times. it begins in cairo, egypt of few years ago. you have been trying to bring this particular novel to some sort of screen forever. hugh: i have. i read it as soon as it came out. it was probably literally warm. i remember it very clearly. i got to the end of chap