The first season of Netflix’s The Diplomat, a political thriller-cum-marital dramedy from creator Debora Cahn, was an unexpected pleasure. It was smarter than it needed to be, but not gravely serious. It featured fully committed, just slightly outsized performances from Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, and others. Most importantly, maybe, the show’s version of geopolitical intrigue—Russell plays a career diplomat used to working in war zones who unexpectedly lands the cushy appointment of US ambassador to the United Kingdom—was credible enough, while also allowing room for soapy embellishments.
Season two, now available on Netflix, thus faced the tricky task of expanding on what made the show work the first time around while not leaning too hard on its own idiosyncrasy. We’ve all seen the dreaded doubling down between first and second seasons, when a series figures a thicker coat of the same paint will keep holding things together.
By some measure, Cahn does unsettle the balance of The Diplomat in these six new episodes. This season, which picks up immediately after season one’s shocking bombing—which left Sewell’s character in mortal peril—is, perhaps understandably, more interested in the fallout of that event than anything so soft as interpersonal drama. Romance, or lack thereof, is eschewed for mystery and machination, as Russell’s Kate Wyler and her team of state department officials and CIA agents try to uncover the nefarious forces behind the attack.
The Diplomat shrewdly traffics in a sort of moral ambivalence that feels true to our real world, without tilting into utter condemnation of American foreign policy. (Much as that policy certainly does deserve condemnation, I’m not sure this mostly airy show is the one to dig into all that.) Characters, including Kate, act both intelligently and rashly as they explore a troubling morass of shadowy connections and insinuations. Their methods are cast in an uneasy light, their certitudes fairly questioned. Hanging over season two is the matter of necessity: what cost are we willing to pay, how much principle and decency will we barter away, in pursuit of security (imagined or not)?
And yet, all that probing is done in the same sprightly fashion as the first season. Episodes end on well-staged cliffhangers; sideways comedy darts through the various stuffy rooms of the ambassador’s stately residence. Not all of the humor lands—at times The Diplomat’s banter is not quite as nimble as it thinks—but enough of it does.
But, yes, the sexy will-they/won’t-they pull of the first season—between Kate and British foreign secretary Austin (David Gyasi)—has been sidelined. Some of that tension and energy is missed, perhaps particularly because it gave Russell, so alert and vulpine in her performance, extra layers to play. Still, she has plenty to contend with in the spiky, lively rapport shared by Kate and her husband, slippery and ever-mutating. In the span of a single scene, they traverse between ailing married couple grasping for an old passion and contentedly steely and loveless co-conspirators in a project to save, or at least reshape, the world.
Kate meets a formidable challenger with the arrival of the US Vice President, played with elegant mettle by Allison Janney. Hers is a witty bit of casting, almost a fanfic reverie in which Janney’s West Wing character, press secretary C.J., went on to even higher office in the years since that show ended. (It should be no surprise that Cahn once wrote for The West Wing.) In their scenes of sparring, Kate and the VP do a wary dance—two powerful women circling one another, not sure if they should help or thwart the other. It’s good fun, as is this show’s ultimate mission.
Which isn’t to downplay The Diplomat’s often understated sophistication, its sharp and welcome aversion to sentiment. A prodigious brain whirs at the center of The Diplomat, which elevates the show above much of its Netflix kin. The series satisfies a perhaps previously unknown itch for something higher-grade than mere streaming chum, but not so demanding as a dense, cerebral premium-cable series. Getting that calibration right, smoothly treading that liminal space, is probably way more difficult than Cahn and company make it look.
It’s quite refreshing that The Diplomat’s second season keeps itself so compact. Maybe that simply had to do with the Hollywood strikes last year, but whatever the reasoning behind the reduction to six episodes, it’s a choice that pays off. We’re whisked away into embassy adventure and then, with a merry swiftness, are served an even better finale shocker than the first season’s. Though this time the surprise is more playful than the first season’s big bang, giddily pushing the show toward an already-ordered third season, for which I can hardly wait. There is no true escape from our own political problems, but some mid-stakes distraction might do for a few hours.
