The Night Manager Episode Two

I had thought the second episode, given the generic description of the plot on Amazon Prime, would give Hugh Laurie a chance to develop his character the same way Tom Hiddleston did his in Episode One.

Nope!

After a brief check-in with Roper’s American girlfriend getting badmouthed by what looks like her own mother on the phone, Richard and his extended company jet off for a nice dinner in Majorca, Spain.  Everything seems to be going well until some thieves come in and take Roper’s young son hostage.  But who’s that lurking in the kitchen?

Flashback six months, and we see Angela Burr successfully draft Jonathan into spy service.  She has her own problems in the form of an untrustworthy MI6 looking over her shoulder, but an American friend (or something more) has her back to get them at least temporarily off her trail.  Her instructions to Jonathan is that he needs to be as ruthless a criminal as Roper, so he moves out to the English countryside under an assumed name where he sells drugs, threatens people, seduces a single mother, and then fakes his own death.

Then he moves on to Majorca himself under another new name, and he’s in business.  That hostage situation?  Faked.  The two thieves are agents.  Jonathan is supposed to rescue the kid, but he goes too far and breaks one of the fake crook’s arms.

Bad news:  that earns him an epic beating to make it look “real”.  Worse news:  Roper recognizes him.  But what to do with the mysterious Mr. Pine?

Burr has some fake criminal records to help things along when Roper’s people do a background check, but Roper and his top security guy Corky are suspicious.  And that’s where we leave things.  Roper tells Pine that he will discover exactly who Pine is somehow.

This spy stuff will kill ya.