Television: Netflix’s new series, starring Keri Russell, is an overcooked example of the streamer’s ‘American goes abroad and is confused’ genre
The Diplomat: Keri Russell as Kate, Uncle Sam’s new woman in Blighty, and Rufus Sewell as her louche husband, Hal. Photograph: Alex Bailey/NetflixRemember when everybody wanted to talk like characters from an Aaron Sorkin drama? This was back in the heyday of Sorkin’s West Wing, a love letter to pre-Trump liberal politics and, even more so, a valentine to speaking quickly while speed-walking through your place of work .
Those days are a long time ago, which may be why The Diplomat feels so past its sell-by date. The showrunner is Debora Cahn, a graduate of the West Wing writers’ room, and you can perhaps hear the Sorkin effect in dialogue that aims for whip-smart but lands on painfully verbose. Keri Russell plays Kate, an American career diplomat all set to take up a job in Kabul when a complicated international emergency involving Iran and the British navy results in her reassignment to the UK. She’s Uncle Sam’s new woman in Blighty, a country The Diplomat imagines as a cross between Hogwarts and a Boris Johnson after-party.
Everyone is posh but a bit cheap and nasty too – none more so than Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge. He’s played by Rory Kinnear, who previously portrayed a British political leader in the notorious episode of Black Mirror involving a pig and ... well, best not go there. Here he must have been told to play the PM as BoJo on ketamine: he is noxiously chummy, with eyes that bulge like Kermit the Frog’s after an all-night rave.
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