‘The Night Manager’ episode 2 review: Is it intriguing (or serious) enough?

Through two episodes, we do think that the BBC has found itself a rather intriguing piece of television in the form of “The Night Manager.” It’s an extremely ambitious project with an excellent cast based on great source material.

Also, it’s a classic sort of secret-spy game, with a brilliant back-and-forth between our tortured man of espionage Pine (Tom Hiddleston) and then the wicked Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). All of this is good, and there is fun to be had in some of the sequences.

With all of this said, is this story doing much of anything to reinvent the mold of this sort of genre project? Not really. Pine is the classic tortured man drug into a new world, trying to stay afloat in a new destination where he is surrounded by people he has to try to win over. Roper’s wife Jed is an interesting character, mostly because she seems to be mostly functioning on the basis of helping those close to her, but not so close that they are on the island. But with that … she and Pine are totally going to get together by the end of this, right?

As for Roper, he already reminds us somewhat of Damian Lewis’ Bobby Axelrod from “Billions,” a man who was so completely charming and devious that he could get away with almost anything. In the process, some tend to underestimate him. That is where we left off at the end of the night, with him seemingly have Pine to rights and him desperate to learn the truth.

Is “The Night Manager” thoroughly entertaining? Beyond the shadow of a doubt, yes. However, we still do have to figure out whether or not this will be that memorable a product down the road.