Yahoo News Is Little Drummer Girl the new Night Manager?
Following Bodyguard and The Cry, BBC One's Sunday night drama slot is now filled by the ambitious new thriller The Little Drummer Girl.
Based on the 1983 novel by John le Carré, the six-part mini-series has been helmed by Oldboy's Park Chan-wook, with Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Shannon leading the cast.
It was an opportunity to work with Park that first sparked Skarsgård's interest in the project. "I'd spoken to him a couple of times over the years, and he's an extraordinarily fascinating man," the Big Little Lies actor tells Digital Spy.
"I'd seen the Oldboy trilogy and [Park's 2016 film] The Handmaiden, and was just dying to work with him. When they reached out with a John le Carré project, it was a done deal. So even before I was reading it, I was very excited about it.
"And then I got the scripts, and just ploughed through them in one night. It was just fantastic."
Skarsgård plays Becker, an enigmatic stranger whose encounter with fiery actress Charlie – played by Pugh – entangles her in a complex plot devised by the spy mastermind Kurtz (Shannon).
"I love Le Carré's writing," enthuses Lady Macbeth's Pugh. "He expects you to stay awake, and to keep up with the storyline – that's what I loved in both The Night Manager and this, and all of the films that have been made [of his novels].
"They really honour that. They are not spoon-feeding you, and they expect you to be present, and to be following the storyline. I think that's really great, to not dumb down for the audience in that way."
Skarsgård goes one further, suggesting that he thinks the complexity of Le Carré's works is such that a two-hour movie will often struggle to do them justice. "A novel like The Little Drummer Girl lends itself to a limited series, more so than a movie," he says.
"That's why I think the old one from the mid-'80s [a 1984 film version of The Little Drummer Girl starred Diane Keaton as Charlie, Yorgo Voyagis as Joseph, and Klaus Kinski as Kurtz] is not as rich as it could have been.
"It's an amazing story with so many characters, and it's important to spend time with all these characters and get to know them – on both sides of the conflict. And it's very difficult to cram that into two hours."
This new television adaptation comes from The Night Manager producers The Ink Factory – co-founded by Le Carré's sons Stephen and Simon Cornwell – and while both Skarsgård and Pugh acknowledge that comparisons to the Tom Hiddleston-fronted hit, also based on a Le Carré book, are unavoidable, they insist that the two stories are very distinct.
"It's inevitable that people are going to compare the two," says Pugh. "They're not the same, obviously. I think what is going to be the main thing that sets them apart is that Director Park directed all six episodes. I think it'll look completely unique."
Related: BBC's new John le Carré adaptation The Little Drummer Girl shares The Night Manager's "ambition"
"Very different tone, very different era, very different story," agrees Skarsgård. The similarities [to The Night Manager] are in the factory behind it, and obviously it's a John le Carré story. But I never thought about it, in developing and working on the character, or while we were shooting it or anything.
"Park Chan-Wook has a very unique style and a unique way of telling a story. So I think it'll set it apart from not only that, but from any other John le Carré work."
Less glamorous and, if anything, even more morally murky than its predecessor, The Little Drummer Girl is more of a character study. As Pugh's character is drawn into the world of espionage, "we see her crumble", the actress says. "She is this amateur that deals and feels the way that any normal person would do. And we see what this world is doing to her."
Skarsgård's intelligence agent Becker, meanwhile, grows "more and more conflicted" as his relationship with Charlie grows more complicated. "He's growing attached to her, and he cares about her, and she's not disposable. There comes a moment where he has to decide... where is his loyalty? Is it with her, or with the cause?"
The Little Drummer Girl is on Sundays at 9pm on BBC One.
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