Mildly intriguing - quite dry.
An Englishman, Jonathan Pine (played by Tom Hiddleston), is working as the night manager of a Cairo hotel. He gets involved with a local woman who is the girlfriend of a local gangster. Through her relationship with the gangster she has acquired information linking illegal international arms sales with Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), an English billionaire. She is soon found dead, murdered due to her having this information. Fearing for his own life, Pine flees, ending up working at a remote hotel in Switzerland. Two years pass, and then Roper visits the Swiss hotel. This rekindles Pines thirst for revenge, and he is enlisted by British Intelligence to spy on Roper. What follows is a very dangerous game of intrigue and deception.
Interesting story, based on a John le Carre novel, but not told in a very exciting way. Just seems like a standard, join-the-dots espionage drama. The excitement is ramped up in the final episode but even then it comes in fits and starts. There's never any real momentum in the series. Conclusion feels rushed too - too neat and easy, after all the setbacks that came before.
Tom Hiddleston is one of the reasons I found the series less than great. He was okay initially, as the night manager. However, he then transformed into a ruthless thug and then a smug, swarmy businessman. The thug part wasn't believable, both from a character development perspective and an acting perspective. The swarmy businessman was also a bit of a character stretch (though not as much as the thug), and was a fairly irritating character to boot.
Solid work by Hugh Laurie as Roper. Interesting to see him in an arch-villain role, and he pulls it off with aplomb.
Good supporting cast - Tom Hollander, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Debicki, David Harewood.
An Englishman, Jonathan Pine (played by Tom Hiddleston), is working as the night manager of a Cairo hotel. He gets involved with a local woman who is the girlfriend of a local gangster. Through her relationship with the gangster she has acquired information linking illegal international arms sales with Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), an English billionaire. She is soon found dead, murdered due to her having this information. Fearing for his own life, Pine flees, ending up working at a remote hotel in Switzerland. Two years pass, and then Roper visits the Swiss hotel. This rekindles Pines thirst for revenge, and he is enlisted by British Intelligence to spy on Roper. What follows is a very dangerous game of intrigue and deception.
Interesting story, based on a John le Carre novel, but not told in a very exciting way. Just seems like a standard, join-the-dots espionage drama. The excitement is ramped up in the final episode but even then it comes in fits and starts. There's never any real momentum in the series. Conclusion feels rushed too - too neat and easy, after all the setbacks that came before.
Tom Hiddleston is one of the reasons I found the series less than great. He was okay initially, as the night manager. However, he then transformed into a ruthless thug and then a smug, swarmy businessman. The thug part wasn't believable, both from a character development perspective and an acting perspective. The swarmy businessman was also a bit of a character stretch (though not as much as the thug), and was a fairly irritating character to boot.
Solid work by Hugh Laurie as Roper. Interesting to see him in an arch-villain role, and he pulls it off with aplomb.
Good supporting cast - Tom Hollander, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Debicki, David Harewood.