The first season of “The Diplomat” gained a surprising audience, opening as No. 1 one in the Netflix Top -0 list with 57 million hours viewed in its first weekend. Season 2 is highly anticipated by viewers. What’s surprising is that it is the sort of series made expressly for adults and those willing to negotiate the labyrinthine mindsets of international diplomacy.
Not that we need be reminded of the grind of diplomacy given current events, there is that immortal quote of a respected diplomat, “You play the cards you’re dealt.” That is the blazing reality of the world we get in this series. The lead role of Kate Wyler (maybe a nod to Kate Hepburn in the 1942 film “Woman of the Year”) is played by Keri Russell with a superb supporting cast including Rufus Sewell as the frenemy husband Hal Wyler, the brilliant but loose-canon former diplomat who can’t give his ego a rest. The tension between the two moves the action at a breakneck pace and Kate is alternately rescued and defied by Hal as one crisis follows another while their overwhelming sex life hangs over all like an emotional knife.
Things aren’t good from the start. Kate is faced with a nasty set of cards indeed. A dismissive snob of a President plucks her out of the diplomatic corps to become the next ambassador to England for reasons more foul than fair and it doesn’t improve once she arrives in London. Never sure which end is up and who is playing her, with good reason, she tries to do some good while deciphering just what the hell is wanted from her. Along with her husband, those around her seem to hinder while they help and meanwhile the intrigue from the United States keeps popping up like a bad smell. Add to this a megalomaniac prime minister with his own agenda and an imposing foreign secretary played subtly and well by David Gyasi and it’s obvious why Kate occasionally goes ballistic.
By the time we get to the final episode where everything seems to be blown up, literally, we have to wonder just how Kate can survive. The tension and mind turns are played brilliantly by Russell, inhabiting a character who has always gone her own way when it comes to style and demeanor. She’s a rough tomboy with a great heart and plenty of flaws of her own who doesn’t give a damn about hair or fashion but certainly as scene follows scene appears being set up in some way by ugly political players at every turn.
So can you trust anyone? Such is the debacle Kate and Hal too are left with as the last episode ends.
Few could have negotiated this role as well as Russell. She joins a growing set of mature young actresses tearing it up as well as any of the greats of film history, Garbo and Stanwyck to Kidman and Streep — now actresses like Emma Stone, Anya Taylor-Joy of “The Queen’s Gambit,” Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry” and Margot Robbie of “Barbie.” Pick your favorite — they are there with these women and more and the wonder is whether there will be enough scripts to embrace their talent.
I sure hope so. With a series like “The Diplomat,” the lockstep of stupidity and chauvinism may at last be crumbling.