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The Diplomat bears the same relationship to twenty-first-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of early nineteenth-century England. The latter is Jane Austen as reimagined by a wannabe Jilly Cooper with a first-class degree in historical revisionism; the former is a bit like what The West Wing might have been if it had been written by Dan Brown and those behind the classic, early 1980s husband-and-wife mystery drama Hart to Hart.
But I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing. A lot of chattering-class types have been glued to The Diplomat since the first season when it started last year and have been recommending it as one of those series you just have to watch. What had put me off, up till now, was the fear that it might actually be as worthy as The West Wing — where its show-runner, Debora Cahn, cut her teeth as a writer.
Obviously I’ve never watched The West Wing, nor would I dream of doing so
Obviously I’ve never watched The West Wing nor would I dream of doing so. But I know what it’s about. It’s a liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy about a liberal US president solving global and domestic crises with his impeccably liberal yet also on occasion liberally pragmatic values, aided and abetted by his crack team of liberal aides. That sort of thing is not my cup of tea.
Nor did I think The Diplomat would be, either. In common with The West Wing it shares this hopelessly idealistic notion that if only we could get a few decent, capable people into high political office they would have the power and ability to make a difference. But it compensates by being so delightfully silly and so utterly disconnected from any sort of recognizable reality that it has the same effect on the brain as the champagne and sloe gin cocktail I once got served at a hunt meet: you’re so far gone that anything that happens thereafter is going to be just dandy.
Though it’s notionally set in London (mainly at the US embassy but also in Westminster), it’s not our London, or our political set up, but something out of a parallel universe, where all the usual rules of protocol and procedure can easily be suspended according to the exigences of plot.
For example, Kate Wyler, the title character (played by Keri Russell), is a no-nonsense foreign services professional who abhors small talk and flim-flam and just wants to get things done — by whatever means necessary. She’s aided by CIA station chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn), her lovable cheeky chapess. But in real life, being ambassador to the Court of St. James’s is a purely ceremonial role, invariably offered as a reward to one of the new president’s more generous donors.
Even more unrealistic, you might argue, is her on-off love interest: the UK foreign secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi). He’s handsome, young, driven, sharply dressed, supple, intelligent, charismatic, beholden-to-no-one, influential, idealistic, witty and, above all, supremely principled. Name any foreign secretary, ever, with even one-third of those qualities and I will sell you my very fine bridge.
My favorite bit of nonsense so far, though, was the scene where, for sundry convoluted reasons, the goodies are trying to exfiltrate a Deep Throat-type spy from a lavish funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Obviously, as you would, they sneak her out through a crypt which opens up to a secret garage — how far-sighted Christopher Wren was! — containing the car that whisks her off to a safe house.
I do admire the chutzpah here. It’s as if you or I had been commissioned to write a drama series set in, say, Bamako and then having established that this was the capital of Mali, decided no further research was needed and that a bit of educated guesswork would suffice. Africa? Excellent. Perfect opportunity for a chase scene, in the heat, down a rutted road with a zebra in the background. Then maybe a sparse hotel room and a ceiling fan and some mosquitos. And a black mamba.
This cavalier approach to verisimilitude, though, is what makes The Diplomat bearable — and even enjoyably moreish. When, for example, the grumpy, sweary prime minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) is accused of being behind the missile attack launched against a Royal Navy warship by a Russian mercenary in order to offset possible devolution from Scotland, you don’t scoff irritably, “That would never happen!” Rather, you rejoice in his villainy.
“Pure escapism” is a dreadful cliché, I know, and one that I would never normally use. But it sums up this utter tosh perfectly. Though it’s set in the world of diplomacy and politics, it shows about as much interest in either of the above as, say, High School Musical does. It’s about the gossip and intrigue; the girly chat; the rivalries; the silly, confected, domestic tiffs between Mrs. Diplomat and her husband (Rufus Sewell); the grand locations.
All of this is enlivened with the occasional, judiciously placed, season-finale car bomb, which, very tragically, appears to deprive the show of its one designated non-binary character.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
