The Diplomat review – nothing else on TV is as entertaining as this exquisitely stressful show
Keri Russell is still trying to stop a sea of berks who are one bad hair day away from starting a nuclear war – only this time, the cortisol levels and the sauciness have been ramped up even further
The Russian submarine is on the fritz and as such remains at the bottom of the North Sea. Its fancy nuclear missile, meanwhile, has been purloined by the Americans in an operation presumably entitled Let’s Flush Our Alliance With the Brits Down the Bog (and potentially instigate the third word war while we’re at it). The prime minister, Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear), remains oblivious and a berk. The Russians are similarly unaware of the theft, for now at least, but the US ambassador to the UK, Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), predicts the eventual discovery will blast the Kremlin’s ushankasskywards. “Russia will come to get their sub,” she warns her unblinking husband – and current US vice president – Hal (Rufus Sewell). “They will lose their shit when they find their apocalypse weapon is gone and they will attack the United Kingdom!” “Hmm,” replies Hal, who has, one suspects, shiftier fish to fry. “Mmm.”
This is where we find ourselves as The Diplomat returns for a fourth series of exquisitely fraught geopolitical skulduggery. Which is to say; we’re stuffed. Poised on the precipice of Big War, a situation almost wholly attributable to the whims of the US president, Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Yikes. But also, in a very real sense, woohoo. Because there are few things as entertaining as The Diplomat in a bad mood, even if the stress induced by its doomsday theatrics requires much diaphragmatic breathing and the odd diplomatic sprint to the loo.
Debora Cahn’s transatlantic thriller has long been fascinated with the real-world consequences of its politicos’ many huffs, its every twist infused with the suspicion that humanity is a bad hair day away from Armageddon.
This time, the stakes and cortisol levels are even higher and Kate once again finds herself trying desperately to avert catastrophes political and personal.
So off we go to Windsor Castle, where we find the Penns and Wylers hissing and tutting at their motorcade having been diverted to the (currently king-free) royal estate after a group of protesters bunged up the M25.
Kate wants Hal to tell the president to tell the PM that the Americans have taken the Russians’ weapon. This will, apparently, “cauterise the fucking mess”. Hal, naturally, does not want to do this. “I’m not endorsing your confessional,” he rasps, sulkily. “It’s dumb.” He is also unimpressed by his wife’s assertion that he and his boss “look shady together”.
“You’re jealous,” he smirks. And she is, hopelessly so. Not just of her husband’s increasingly close relationship with Grace, but also of the fact that Hal’s job allows him to swank around doing clever-clogs global stuff while hers leaves her stuck in drizzly London, pretending to enjoy Trowbridge’s garibaldis. Kate is also jealous of Grace, and Grace’s husband, Todd (Bradley Whitford), and throbbingly thighed spy-hunk Callum Ellis (Aidan Turner). She would probably be jealous of the royal corgis, too, if they hadn’t all been removed from Windsor before the Americans’ arrival (a wise move: Grace would have mistaken them for sheep and tried to have them served “on rye”).
Several big things happen involving snipers, security breaches and globular Russians smushing their chins into their chest while mumbling about the fall of the west. The tension! The near-cartoonish absurdity! But, as always, it’s the small stuff that proves most captivating: the perpetual microshifts in power; the twinges of affection in the interminable game of 4D chess that is the Wylers’ marriage.
The cast is, as ever, fantastic. Not least Whitford as the terminally uninterested Penn and Sewell as the self-serving Hal, the latter’s performance a succession of fleeting tics conducted behind cheekbones that could dislodge the cobwebs from a proscenium arch.
But shh, here comes Kate with another semi-flirtatious grumble re hubby’s relationship with the president. “I mean,” she oozes. “It’s dangerous. The two of you together, hurtling into the abyss …”
Ambassador, with this saucy nihilism, you are really spoiling us!
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