AMC adapted John LeCarre’s novel The Night Manager into a six-hour miniseries. It airs on Tuesday nights at 10:00. I am commenting on it now having seen four of the six hours, but unlike shows I’ve seen on other networks (and I’m looking at you, Syfy) I have no trepidation or anxiety that they are going to completely screw up the ending. I am in the hands of master storytellers here, and I am completely confident.
I had not read the book, but the quality of the performances and the storytelling made me go buy it. Of course the book is more complex and may very well have a different ending, but Le Carre has a writer’s credit on the show, and I can already see that some familiar LeCarre themes (corruption, accountability, the danger of cynicism) are addressed.
A lot of the show involves Tom Hiddleston, the hotel night manager of the title, interacting with Hugh Laurie, a conscienceless billionaire arms dealer. These scenes hum with intensity. Olivia Coleman, who plays intelligence operative Angela Burr, does not get anywhere near enough scenes with Hiddleston, but she matches the two men stroke for stroke when it comes to acting chops. After an uneven opening hour devoted mostly to backstory (and beautifully done) the series hit its stride, if that’s the right term, with a feeling of a spring-loaded apparatus getting, slowly, wound tighter, tighter, and still tighter, until the metal quivers and begins to creak. And then, still tighter.
Jonathan Pine, an ex-soldier, is the night manager of a five-star hotel in Cairo during the Arab Spring uprising. Pine is approached by a woman guest, the mistress of a prominent Cairo family, with evidence of an arms deal, with British mogul Richard Roper as the broker of the deal. The “arms deal” includes hardware and things like Sarin gas. Pine approaches a friend from his military days who works for the home office. They pass on the information to Angela Burr, lead analyst in a criminally underfunded enforcement agency in London. Jonathan Pine promises the woman, Sophia, that Britain will protect her, but it turns out he can’t keep that promise. Sophia is not protected, and Pine can’t save her.
Four years later Pine has an opportunity, with Angela’s help, to take revenge on Roper. This is where the cat-and-mouse game begins. When Burr first meets with Pine and asks him why he passed on the original information, he gives a Queen-and-country answer. He says when he saw someone British selling those weapons, “Something stirred, I suppose.” It seems like he means outrage or moral indignation, and that his desire for revenge is also, at least slightly, also about justice. Once Angela plants him inside Roper’s tight, secretive and complex group, though, a different aspect of Pine emerges.
Hugh Laurie plays Richard Roper (“I’m Dickie Roper”) with a hooded-eyed distance; a calculation, humor and coolness that only emphasizes his dangerousness. He is ruthless; he is witty and genial. He is loving in an absent-minded, career-driven-dad way to his young son Danny. He is a master criminal who is, as another character puts it, “completely faithful” to his girlfriend. He is a monster and knows it, and isn’t particularly bothered by it.
Hiddleston and Laurie are awesome whenever they are on the screen together. Hiddleston can deliver intensity and vulnerability, sometimes in the same moment; Laurie can deliver menace, and also, strangely, vulnerability, and when then two of them are interacting… I should have some great descriptor there, but the term that comes to mind is, “Whoa.”
Pine is a risk-taker, a man in control who seeks intensity. In the fourth episode, Roper grills him, humorously, about what he wants; hashish? Alcohol? Girls, boys, young, old? Pine politely declines each and Roper says, only half-joking, “I don’t know if I can trust a man with no appetites.” He overlooks Pine’s appetite for danger, and that will bring problems to both of them. That earlier line, “Something stirred, I suppose,” takes on a different meaning. So does the very opening scene of the show, which starts with Pine walking through the crowds of demonstrators in Cairo. That scene was baffling when we first saw it; watching Pine up through Episode Four, that scene suddenly plays differently too. Pine does lust for something. It isn’t revenge. It’s danger; a chance to test himself with no safety net.
Meanwhile, with her shabby old coat, her half-brushed hair and a wardrobe that brings new dimension to the word “frumpy,” Angela Burr is an even bigger badass than Pine. She’s a risk-taker too, gambling her career while several months pregnant, horse-trading with her CIA counterpart, playing Mother Confessor to a former partner of Roper’s, out-maneuvering corrupt and arrogant adversaries at MI6, facing down tainted colleagues. Coleman is a treasure in this role.
The series is directed by Suzanne Bier, a Danish film-maker who has a great eye, and uses a lot of hand-held camera work here. It creates the tense, frightening intimacy; it’s also overdone just enough that it becomes noticeable at times, intruding on the story. (In a different way, Hiddleston’s good looks intrude on the story at certain moments, too.) This is a flaw, and it’s a tiny one that does no lasting damage to the series. Bier is brilliant.
The entire cast is pitch perfect, but these three are the main characters, and this show is a work of art. I can’t wait to find out how it ends… and then read the book. And then, probably, watch it again.