What is more fragile, a bad marriage or an alliance between international powers. Indeed, both answers are correct and that is the premise from which the showrunner Debora Cahn starts for the Netflix series ‘The Diplomat’. Politics is not alien to this Screenwriter who has already worked on hits like ‘The West Wing of the White House’ or ‘Homeland’ and, in fact, he has used the experience and documentation wisdom he amassed researching for the series starring Claire Danes to create his new hit. Barely a month after its premiere, the series has been renewed for a second season.
Keri Russell, it will sound like ‘Felicity’ or ‘The Americans’, is the protagonist and plays Kate Wyler, a career diplomatic officer seasoned in field work in complicated scenarios of conflict zones, a parallel with Carrie Mathison’s career within the CIA in ‘Homeland’. The twist comes when she, instead of the influential post in Afghanistan she is expecting, is sent to London as a political ambassador. A position that she does not want and to which she arrives like an elephant in a china shop. Posturing and, if you press me, relationships in general, he’s not very good at it. Even so, the president of the USA (Michael McKean) has thought of her to replace the vice president when he resigns due to a scandal. The stopover in London is a kind of preparation for his landing in the Government. The drawbacks will be that she doesn’t know that fact, that she’s not used to hogging flashes, and her husband Hal Wyler is also a diplomat (although exiled) from whom she wants to divorce and who -although he supports her- keeps getting her into trouble.
Luckily, not everything is going to be bad. In his favor is trusted by White House Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) and with experience and loyalty of Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh), Kat’s deputy chief of missione at the US embassy in London. She is going to be her right hand and the one in charge that, when the time comes, she is prepared for her fate in the White House. A mission in which he a priori does not believe, at all.
Cahn has explained that he likes “dramas that have a sense of the absurd”. He already adds that “diplomacy has a lot of that.” “There are a lot of rules and protocols, but underneath that are people sweating, getting coffee on their clothes, and forgetting the name of the person they’re talking to.” The protagonist, Kate, also has a lot of that. He is not overly concerned with image, his appearance is rather scruffy and, to a certain extent, it is part of its charm.
It is the first series in many years for Russell, who ensures that over the years she works less because she values being with her family more and, consequently, has become more selective. The key to choosing ‘The Diplomat’ was “Debora’s writing”: “She is so smart and funny and puts this woman in such crazy situations.”
Together with the humor and the devilishly agile rhythm, we find characters with a lot of charisma capable of showing all the “stupid and immature things that happen in a real world in which very serious decisions are made.” AND the key is also in the distribution Completed by Ali Ahn, in the role of the head of the CIA in London Eidra Park; David Gyasi as Austin Dennison, the British Foreign Secretary; Rory Kinnear as British Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge; and Miguel Sandobal, as the US Secretary of State Miguel Ganon.
