Over two high-stakes seasons, this drama about a US ambassador to the UK who finds herself moonlighting for the president and the entire state department has proved itself to be a rare beast: a political thriller that is frequently excellent, often erudite (a character once referred to another as “the Hecate of Highgate” instead of just calling her a stirrer), but which also requires the total and utter suspension of your disbelief. Question any of it for a second – as I did in the final episode of this third series, when the new US president asks the prime minister whether Chequers is his family’s ancestral seat – and it begins to crumble. But if you file it firmly within the category of spicy geopolitical soap? Boy oh boy, is it good.
We pick up where season two left off, and the aftermath of a car bomb that badly injured Kate’s (Keri Russell) on/off husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell). Meanwhile, British PM Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) is still apoplectic about the actions of Tory fixer Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), who proved to be not only an irritant with a direct line to the Daily Mail, but the mastermind of a false-flag operation that implicated Russia. Of course, what our canny diplomat Kate knows is that Roylin was acting on behalf of someone even more influential: US vice-president Grace Penn (Allison Janney), whose job Kate was eyeing up last season. Everyone has more pressing concerns, however: when he found out the truth about Penn, President Rayburn carked it in the final moments of season two, leaving Penn to step up and creating a vacancy for VP. Surely Kate is a shoo-in as Penn’s deputy, especially with this much collateral on her?
Of course, with there being eight episodes to fill, Kate does not simply pack up her large collection of trouser suits and leg it to the White House to get down to some paperwork. Not least because Penn doesn’t choose her for VP – she picks noted manchild Hal instead. He takes the role but insists he’ll find something for Kate to do; rather than suggesting something in the vein of, say, Melania Trump’s Be Best anti-bullying campaign, he decides maybe she can lead on the reconstruction of Ukraine or maybe pull up a chair with Nato.
What follows is an increasingly ludicrous tale, as Kate attempts to hang on to her ambassador role while also dropping into DC now and again for second lady duty. I suppose there isn’t really a show called The Diplomat if the lead character isn’t a diplomat any more, but it is so stressful watching her pinball between the two countries, standing up the director of the CIA because she’s forgotten to check Google Calendar. The whole thing is – as put-upon White House chief of staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) puts it – “a cockamamie arrangement”, though you may prefer stronger terms. Kate does, at least, bag a boyfriend along the way, played by Poldark’s Aidan Turner, who says things like “in a day or so, [Hal’s] going to go back to Washington, and I’m going to take all your clothes off”. It isn’t the sexiest dialogue ever but saves on limited time, due to all of the above and a new military threat.
There are, I’m glad to report, some excellent performances, not least from West Wing alums Janney and Bradley Whitford, who reconnect here with each other and with showrunner Debora Cahn. They are reunited as Penn and her husband, Todd, an “increasingly insignificant househusband married to a supernova” who stifles all of his frustration beneath a rictus grin, à la Succession’s Connor Roy. Keri Russell does defeated, stressed and angry all at once again with mastery, especially when she’s telling her lookalike decoy to buy a hairbrush. I struggle to care too much about the ongoing will they/won’t they dynamic between Kate’s right-hand man Stuart (Ato Essandoh) and CIA chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn), but I am still glad to see them all there, like old friends (albeit the sort of friends who talk solely about political conspiracies and whether or not they should kiss). We also learn more about Kate and Hal’s marriage, and the ebb and flow of power between these two that helps to contextualise flippant lines from earlier in the series, like the time Kate absent-mindedly mentioned her other half had once been kidnapped by Hezbollah.
The final two episodes see us hurtle towards a startlingly similar conclusion to last season, and there are moments where it begins to drag. But, on the whole, The Diplomat remains a treat. Keep that disbelief close, and it will feel more like a comedy in places. But keep it at bay, and – much like our own real-world politics – it is a nail-biter.
• The Diplomat is on Netflix now.
