So, does Tom Hiddleston want to be James Bond? His name has been mentioned more than once (alongside perennial contenders Idris Elba and Clive Owen), and a case could certainly be made for it: Jonathan Pine, his character in AMC’s sleek new miniseries The Night Manager, is the right mixture of clever and patriotic, although he lacks Bond’s sociopathic streak. No, I don’t think Hiddleston is auditioning to be Bond. What he is doing is putting his stamp on a character that he seeks to make all his own. John le Carre’s spies are worlds apart from those of Ian Fleming’s, and Pine has more in common with George Smiley, le Carre’s phantom cipher of a spy played by Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
If it hasn’t hit you by now, The Night Manager is really good. And Tom Hiddleston is damn good in it. Pine is in almost every scene of “Episode One,” and because of this we’re treated to a more nuanced performance from Hiddleston than we’ve seen in the ubiquitous Marvel movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love his work as Loki, and in fact I think he’s one of the best villains of the past decade (edged out by Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter). But here we get to see more tenderness, more insecurity, and it all serves to make Pine feel human and fully fleshed-out, a mere hour into the show. It’s an impressive achievement. Director Susanne Bier, whose In A Better World won the Oscar for Foreign Language Film, frames Pine in conspiratorial closeups, doing marvelous work with shots of his clenched hands or tightly shut eyes, wordlessly and artfully bringing us into his headspace.
Should I talk plot? With le Carre, does plot really matter? (Quick, explain exactly what happened in A Most Wanted Man.) I will say this, though: “Episode One” packs a lot of plot into seventy-five minutes. This is one of le Carre’s more narratively propulsive stories, and The Night Manager is content to drop us into the middle of the action – literally, the Arab Spring of 2011 – and trust us to not only catch up but to keep up.
This level of trust in the audience is what sets The Night Manager even further apart than, say, Spectre, which was a barely-disguised 150-minute trailer for the next Bond film. “Episode One” could have coasted on the atmosphere it establishes alone, but the show takes several bold steps with its narrative.
Like, killing the prospective love interest. That’s a bold move. I’ll be honest, Pine’s burgeoning romance with Sophie Alekan (Aure Atika) felt rushed, and served as little more than an introduction to local scumbag Freddie Hamid. Hiddleston and Atika have good chemistry, but their subplot was one of the few stumbling blocks of this episode. That said, killing the woman offscreen is a bold move, and helps establish the villainous bonafides of Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie).
But “Episode One” doesn’t stop there. It also includes a four-year time jump, taking us from 2011 to 2015, and a radical location shift, from Cairo in the midst of riots to a hotel in remote Zermott, Switzerland. This is where Pine and Roper cross paths again, and the isolated setting makes for a good locked-room mystery, full of loaded glances and simmering suspicion.
The performances, unsurprisingly, are terrific. Hiddleston I’ve already talked about, but Hugh Laurie excels as well, clearly relishing the chance to play a villain as monstrous as Roper, referred to as “the worst man in the world.” But he’s not campy or flamboyant; little touches like his bald spot or how he refers to himself as “Dickie” do a great job of humanizing him. Olivia Colman (Locke) is a particular delight. As Angela Burr, an analyst with the International Enforcement Agency, Colman injects the dour, portentous proceedings with a shot of take-no-bullshit verve and energy.
Ultimately, “Episode One” is a setup for the rest of the series (all of which, thankfully, will be directed by Bier). Yet it never feels like one of the “place setting” episodes which I so love to bitch about. It’s a glimpse into another world, and while some shows would treat an episode like this as an invitation, The Night Manager makes sure we know that our attendance is mandatory.
A Few Thoughts
- This show would be a thousand times funnier if the villain was Richard Roeper, famous film critic.
- Hiddleston plays Pine as a more dramatic version of Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel. I love it.
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