Walking! Talking! Holding Manila folders! Everyone very stressed all the time!
The tried and tested nature of government-based dramas have stood the test of time for a reason: we can't get enough of political process porn. Whether it's terse talks over long mahogany tables or sentences awash with acronyms we don't fully understand, the formula for a solid political series has remained relatively unchanged from The West Wing to House of Cards and now to Netflix's new drama The Diplomat.
The series stars Keri Russell in her first return to television since The Americans. She plays an American ambassador sent to London in the middle of a diplomatic crisis that sees her having to juggle world-altering political moves and a career-implicating divorce from her husband (Rufus Sewell), who is also an ambassador. From the early episodes, stakes of the highest order are set with the powder keg special relationship between the UK, with its oh-so-haughty Prime Minister played by Rory Kinnear, and the US's blowhard President, played by Michael McKean.
If you get an innate sense of nostalgia for The West Wing from watching The Diplomat, it's probably deliberate. Not only is the entire structure more or less exactly the same, just with The White House swapped for the wood-panelled walls of English country manors, but because it shares a writer. Debora Cahn, the show's creator, started her career as a writer and producer on The West Wing (although during the Aaron Sorkin-less latter seasons) and later added Homeland to her CV. Crucially, she also has a fair amount of Grey's Anatomy under her belt which, though certainly not of the same prestige ilk, is a show known for its soapy twists and turns.
The Diplomat does scratch that The West Wing itch, with all of its fast-talking, nuclear stakes and menial office drama stuck in the eye of a hurricane of international grievances. Like The West Wing, the bulk of the show revolves around the support staff trying to stop powerful white men pushing the big red button and, considering most of these characters aren't themselves white men, delivers a subtle message on who gets to have glory and who has to succeed in silence. The whole show, really, is an internal battle about how the people who deserve power can't hack the optics, while the ones who are bred for it are a liability.
There's a split mix of British and American talent, though interestingly many of the British actors, like Pearl Mackie and Rufus Sewell, are playing Americans. Considering it's an American production, there's a heavy daub of twee to the way British political propriety is laid out, from the stiff upper lip of career politicians to the nosy, cold housekeepers. For a British viewer, it feels kind of on the nose, especially as extremely British slang is thrown into professional conversations that would never be appropriate.
Bar Kiefer Sutherland's Designated Survivor, Netflix hasn't had a meaty political win on its roster since House of Cards. And like Designated Survivor, The Diplomat, for all of its interesting analysis on power dynamics and the way people are moulded for high-pressure leadership roles, has to rely on some good old-fashioned soap tropes like workplace romances and infidelity and cliffhanger kidnappings to get you to click play immediately on the next episode.
Still, if you've been missing the unique charm of people in great blazers testing their hand-eye coordination down a hallway while telling world-shattering secrets, it would be hard to find a better show than The Diplomat right now.
