The Night Manager TV Series

If you read the rumors about whom might replace Daniel Craig back in 2016, you would have heard Tom Hiddleston’s name bandied about. And, Daniel Craig returns for his fifth and final bow as 007, we viewers have been treated to a glimpse of what a Hiddleston-as-Bond might be like in BBC’s “The Night Manager.”

Based off a 1993 John Le Carre novel, The Night Manager has been updated to modern times. The six-episode series opens with Hiddleston serving as the night manager in a Cairo hotel during the Arab Spring. Most of the action takes place outside the doors of the hotel, but a fetching woman, Sophie, the mistress of local big shot Freddie Hamid, asks Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine to copy some documents. A former soldier, Pine is horrified to read a list of weapons, including chemical weapons, as sold by Ironlast, the front company for notorious arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). Pine sends the list up to London and where Oliva Colman’s character, intelligence operative Angela Burr, sees it and realizes this is a vital clue to bring down Roper. Unfortunately for Sophie, Hamid believes her to be the leak and she is killed.

And Pine drops out of sight for four years. When next we meet him, he is working in Switzerland hotel and is tasked with welcoming none other than Roper and his moll, Jed Marshall (Elizabeth Debicki). He can barely stomach the man, but puts on a professional face. Until Angela Burr approaches him about going under cover. To do the right thing. Of course Pine says yes or else we wouldn’t have enough to fill up six hours.

What follows is mostly standard fare for spy shows, but the three lead actors help carry The Night Manager above other movies or TV series of its type. The lengths Pine goes to in order to get inside Roper’s inner circle had me asking if I could do it. Likely not. But Hiddleston’s charm in on full display in every scene. He may not be Bond, but he would have been a decent one, probably a little harder edged than Pierce Brosnan but not as masculine as Craig or Sean Connery. Speaking of Bond, the opening title montages is straight out of the Bond playbook as is the music.

Hugh Laurie was a nice surprise for me. I never watched his TV show, “House,” or most of his other movies. In fact, the only thing I can truly remember him in is the live action “101 Dalmatians.” But he plays a bad guy very well. He’s eerie calm, which makes him all the more dangerous. And when he stares at Pine or other characters, silently studying them, it’s a penetrating, withering stare.

The Night Manager is full of tropes and, for the most part, the show steers away from all but the most obvious choice. The one trope that I constantly wonder about is the villain inviting the hero into the evil inner circle. Why do that? Is it born out of excessive suspicion? That isn’t the case with Roper and Pine but it still made me wonder.

What are y’all’s thoughts on The Night Manager? Did the tropes bother you?