The Diplomat landed on Netflix almost as a surprise. One tends to distrust official summaries, but one has to acknowledge that in this case they nailed it: “It is a high-tension contemporary political drama about the importance and anguish of long-term relationships between countries and people.” Within five minutes of watching, the parallels to The West Wing of the White House, the Aaron Sorkin series, are more than obvious. No need to do much research: Debora Cahn, its creator, was the screenwriter of this glorious fiction that narrated the two terms in office of imaginary Democratic President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen), his team and family between 1999 and 2006. Cahn says he’s thought about doing a series like this ever since.
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In the world of The Diplomat, like in the world of The West Wing, everything relates to the present. To a present that is almost like that, but not quite. It’s a parallel reality (okay, a multiverse) that’s hard for you to tell isn’t yours. It will take place in 2023. Russia has invaded Ukraine and a British aircraft carrier suffers an unclaimed attack in Gulf waters. Something that sounds familiar, but not quite, as it is neither the al Qaeda attack on the destroyer USS Cole in 2000 nor the 2019 sabotage of oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman that Iran has been blamed for, a country that denied this. . The same thing happens in the series.
In this context, Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), an American diplomat specializing in troubled places like Afghanistan, receives her first senior position: Ambassador to the United Kingdom. She is married to Hal, a high-profile veteran diplomat who makes Flure for being smart. “You’re so famous that nobody wants to work with you,” she tells him when he tells her to be more social. Hal is the one who explains the difference between them and their predecessors to the embassy’s public relations department. “The previous ambassador got the job because he raised two million dollars for the president, like most US ambassadors in great European jobs. Kate and I are more like the British ambassadors: a lot of experience in crisis areas. And without an art collection.
For example, his predecessor’s profile fits that of someone like Woody Johnson, the London representative of the Trump administration. As the heir to the Johnson & Johnson empire, he had raised $1.5 million for the former president’s campaign. Owner of the New York Jets since 2000, he became enthusiastic about football during his stays in London and wanted to buy Chelsea from Abramovich. He bid $2.6 billion.
For the fictional Kate Wyler, the job is a test. They want to test whether, while an obvious disaster as a celebrity, she can serve as a replacement for a vice president about to be fired by a president who isn’t Joe Biden but closely resembles him. As British Prime Minister, he would be a cross between David Cameron and Boris Johnson. With the dance they’ve had since Brexit, it was hard for the character to resemble anyone.
Kate and Hal look familiar. Hal has an aura of President Bartlet, the protagonist of The West Wing… if you strip him of many of his virtues and leave him his flaws. He is manipulative, seductive, and morally ambiguous. This is exactly what fails their marriage. Kate appears to be the amalgamation of two characters from The West Wing: the tough, no-nonsense first lady and the witty, quick-witted spokeswoman for the presidency.
Because like Sorkin’s series, everyone in The Diplomat is funny and intelligent. They seem to think twice as fast as normal and speak even faster. Or if not, ask the person in charge of the subtitles who is forced to summarize to keep up. The answers and counter-answers are so quick that sometimes it seems like you’ve got half of it figured out. But they make the series exciting. You don’t see many with extremely smart people. The eight chapters of the first season just fly by. It ends on one of those cliffhangers that should only be allowed when the second season is already coming. It could happen: This Monday the series was officially renewed.
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