The Diplomat

If you liked The West Wing …

The Diplomat (2023)

4 / 5

As one who was watching regular ol’ broadcast television in the 90s, I had a love/hate relationship with The West Wing. Arguably Aaron Sorkin’s best work, the show had the smartest, punchiest, most addictive dialogue I had heard to that point. Unfortunately, it was also absurd progressive-politics fanfiction written in service to gauzy Clinton-presidency hagiography. The show tried to use current events as its guiding stars to keep it sharp and “relevant,” but mostly succeeded only in painting a rosy fantasy-portrait of a world that simply didn’t exist. This hit its ridiculous apotheosis in the astoundingly dumb decision to not have the 9/11 attacks happen in the show’s continuity. The lack of that pivotal event on the show was an act of narrative cowardice that meant it tacked away from current events right at the moment that its voice could have shed real light on just what kind of warmongering realpolitik had been taking hold in the US government since the Eisenhower administration. So yeah, it was a love/hate thing for me.

For better or for worse, The Diplomat doesn’t shy away. Everything you enjoyed about The West Wing is in here, with the problems more or less fixed and the holes more or less plugged. If you cock your head to the side and squint, you could convince yourself it’s a sequel series. Keri Russell is brilliant as Ambassador Kate Wyler, a no-nonsense career diplomat with sharp instincts and a sailor’s vocabulary (this is a streaming show, so there are plentiful F-words and a couple of bare butts; be ye warned). Far from a Mary Sue girl-boss, Wyler struggles mightily with her posting: she wants to be in Afghanistan so she can “do something real” but finds herself in the UK, which she views as a silly ceremonial position … until it isn’t. Also a struggle is her relationship with her equally-smart and maybe-more-ambitious husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). Russell and Sewell are great together, and they lead the cast through scripts filled to bursting with crackling Sorkinesque dialogue. 

It still nods in the direction of The West Wing’s hagiographic glow, so if your progressive viewing pleasure demands that government ultimately always be the right answer (including the fantasy that the deep state is populated by plucky heroes who genuinely want to do the right thing) then this will sing you a pleasant lullaby. The show does seem to realize, however, that trying to redeem the Biden administration is a fool’s errand, so the plot largely sidelines it in favor of Ambassador Wyler working with a wholly fictionalized UK Government to try and stave off the opening salvos of a nuclear war. In today’s world the themes of global warmongering can’t be avoided, and while The Diplomat chooses to explore them via fiction, there are thought-provoking developments here that are worth a conversation. 

4 stars of 5: I liked it, and will watch season 2, though I hope that it ends at season 2 or 3 so it ends while it’s good and doesn’t peter out stupidly.