Spy caper ‘The Night Manager’ comes to AMC

At first blush, Richard Roper seems like the type of man you’d wish could run for president.

Erudite, genteel and philanthropic to a fault, this billionaire British businessman is the very image of someone in whom you would entrust the greater good.

But get beneath the surface and another picture emerges, one of a self-interested wheeler dealer who built his empire selling illegal arms to the highest bidder and buying a few souls in the process. As played by Hugh Laurie (“House”), he’s the devil in designer threads.

It is into this man’s lavish world in “The Night Manager,” a six-part miniseries that premieres Tuesday on AMC, that ex-British soldier Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston, “Midnight in Paris”) is thrust. Pine, an Iraq War veteran who has retreated from life as a night manager at a Cairo hotel, is recruited by intelligence operative Angela Burr (Olivia Colman, “Broadchurch”) to infiltrate Roper’s inner circle and get at the heart of his vast empire. But he must first withstand the interrogations of Roper’s suspicious chief of staff Major Corkoran (Tom Hollander, “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”) and resist the wiles of his gorgeous trophy girlfriend Jed (Elizabeth Debicki, “Everest”). And worst of all, he himself must become a criminal.

The series, based on a John le Carre espionage novel, is set after the Cold War and was filmed in locations ranging from Switzerland and England to Morocco and the Spanish island of Majorca, where Roper’s Mediterranean villa is situated.

“What I found fascinating about Jonathan Pine in John le Carre’s novel and in the adaptation,” Hiddleston said to a recent gathering of TV critics in Pasadena, Calif., “is there is a tension between a very calm exterior and a turbulent and chaotic interior, that he’s someone who actually has a great amount of vulnerability and a huge amount of doubt.

“Le Carré describes him as a self exiled creature of the night and a sailor without a destination. And Angela Burr, played by Olivia Colman, compels him to make a commitment, and she lights a spark within him that impels him to act and to follow through on that commitment, which is to take down Richard Roper. And I think all the way through Susanne (Bier, an executive producer and director) always encouraged me to lean into the tension between his obligation to be very, very calm and very passive on the surface while he’s actually on fire beneath that, and that tension I enjoyed playing very much.”

As for Roper, Laurie describes him as a psychotic who operates in an almost medieval fashion outside the boundaries of society.

“There’s a sort of Colonel Kurtz aspect to it, I think,” he says, alluding to the unhinged character played by Marlon Brando in the 1979 war drama “Apocalypse Now,” “that he has surrounded himself with people whose livelihoods depend on his good opinion. That’s always likely to drive somebody psychotic, as any studio head will attest.

“It’s not good for one’s sanity, I think, to be able to operate unopposed,” he continues, “and this is a man who has created a world for himself where he can operate unopposed, unchallenged. And yes, he has given way to the dark side in a very, very big way. A very big way. He is described in the story as the worst man in the world, which is a pretty exciting challenge to take on as a character to play, but a thrilling one too.”

“I love everything, every word le Carré ever wrote, but this is a story that, in particular, I found incredibly compelling. Right back when the book was first published, I was three chapters in, and I tried to option it. I never optioned anything in my life before or since. But that’s how compelling, how romantic and how powerful I found this story to be.”