How The Diplomat became TV’s slickest, most addictive thriller
Four seasons into this Netflix hit, global dread has never looked so glamorous.
The Diplomat serves up a deliciously fizzy cocktail of ingredients. A dynamic cast generating crackling chemistry. Razor-sharp, briskly delivered dialogue. Robust battles of the sexes. A wild ride through the backroom manoeuvres of global politics executed with the propulsive pace of a thriller. As a bonus, there are the pleasures of what its creator and showrunner Debora Cahn has called “location porn”: a veritable gallery of glamorous settings that provide viewers with access to posh places they could never hope to enter.
The glossy, big-budget political drama’s brand of international diplomacy isn’t about interminable meetings nutting out the minutiae of trade deals in undistinguished conference rooms. It operates in territory closer to the jet-setting realm of James Bond, building its fictional world in English castles, American coastal mansions and Italian villas. When in Paris, it’s a gala function at the Louvre.
This series isn’t concerned with the political ramifications of fuel prices or the cost of living crisis. Focusing on international relations at the top levels of government, it’s high stakes in high style. Aircraft carriers are attacked, NATO is threatened and nuclear weapons are stolen; the Western world seems perpetually on the brink of war. It’s grounded in the real world, but not exactly as we know it.
The Diplomat takes big swings at big subjects, and the skill of the cast and the quality of the writing help to make them work, fuelled by the accelerated pace and omnipresent sense of urgency. As the recent, compelling and cleverly shaped fourth season attests, it continues to fire on all cylinders.
The series began in 2023 with the appointment of Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) to the post of American ambassador to the UK and has subsequently charted her frequently fraught progress, establishing early that she’s a career foreign-service officer more comfortable working in Afghanistan than in London. Kate’s accustomed to, and skilled at, bargaining in basements with warlords, more confident wearing a burqa than a ballgown to do her job.
