1x01 Episode 1

[7.7/10] I'll confess -- I didn’t know anything about this show except that it had Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, and Olivia Colman in it. Given the title, I had kind of assumed it was going to be a parlor room drama set in some elegant hotel. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be a spy thriller with international intrigue in a vein that seems to be taking its cues from Homeland and Syriana in terms of tone and visual style, beyond the obvious connections to John le Carre’s other works and the adaptations of the,

I like the setup here. I’ll admit, I’m not wild about the immediate introduction and fridging of Sophie. It’s not quite Instalove, but having Pine meet this woman, immediately forge this deep connection, and then lose her to international criminal acts, feels a bit cliché. That said, the acting and chemistry is good enough to make up for some of the elements being stock, and the steadicam realism of the way the show shoots a lot of these scenes helps make the emotions and intensity of it all land.

At the same time, a lot of the cinematography is beautiful. Beyond striking scenery in Egypt, beautiful vistas in Switzerland, and muddy shots of London, there’s some striking composition and framing at play when the show isn’t going for that realism vibe. The simple framing of Pine and Burr opposite one another at a table in a symmetrical shot grabs the eye, and the imagery of Pine over Sophie’s dead body while her dog is covered in blood is visceral and arresting enough to make up for the cliché.

Setting the initial events in the Arab Spring is an interesting choice (and clearly an update, since the original novel was written in 1993). The fact that most of the first episode of this show is a prologue of sorts gives it room to play. We see glimpses of Pine’s life and choices before what I take to be the main focus of the series, and watching the way he fetes moneyed guests, only to confront a situation that calls upon his integrity in a country on the verge of great tumult, informs who he is and why he’s moved to make the choices he does once he crosses paths with the apparent villain of the piece.

That villain is Roper, a billionaire who projects a public image of philanthropy and care for his fellow man, while secretly doing backroom deals to prop up bad actors, wage wars, and put down people’s movements around the world. Worse yet, he’s financially stockpiled and connected enough that even when someone like Pine blows the whistle and someone like Burr tries to act, the powers that be prevent him from coming to justice.

The core of the show -- the hypocrisy and injustice of that sort of arrangement -- makes for a strong thematic foundation for both the plot and the characters. When Roper checks into the hotel where Pine has moved to after the grisly events of Cairo, the young man sees an opportunity to right a wrong, and maybe earn a measure of justice for someone he cared for and stuck his neck out for, only to see the worst happen to a person and a people because it served someone more powerful’s interests.

There’s intrigue in his surreptitious efforts to collect evidence and otherwise pin Roper down, while ostensibly being at his service. We don’t get to know most of the characters yet, but we get hints of them, from Roper himself’s genial but sinister presence, his girlfriend’s oblivious yet alluring demeanor, his would-be lieutenant’s more everyman qualities mixed with a knowing vibe, and his security chief’s bottled roughness. They’re more archetypes than characters at this point, but there’s potential and threats to each of them as the intensity ratchets up.

By the same token, I already like the team of Pine and Burr. Olivia Colman is unstoppable, and the way she communicates a certain wryness with a line like “Lift’s broken; keeps ya fit” is unassumingly masterful. Her rallying against a broken system, or at least one with too many loopholes for people willing to spend money to make them, is a strong throughline.

And of course, Pine (and Hiddleston) hold the center here quite well. Beyond the vignette we see with Pine and Sophie, I like the bit of his character we get at the end. Burr points out that as a veteran, he knows what weapons of war can do, he’s seen how the battlefield can fail to meet standards of justice. He’s not just here to avenge a pair of batted eyelashes who did a brave thing and was killed while the supposed good guys turned a blind eye. He’s here to stop a broader injustice, of well-heeled interests being above the law and, worse yet, gaining the tacit affirmation of supposed protectors to stifle the people however he sees fit.

There’s a million places the story could go from here. (And if the beautiful locales and settings are any indication, I wouldn’t mind it for the visuals alone.) But this is a strong start, and I’m curious to see what comes next.