'The Diplomat' Gets Special Commendation for Being a Superior International Drama

To make a successful political drama series, you need to make it feel a) like it’s urgent and current enough to be relevant to the real world and b) that its politics are distilled into an exciting and dramatic format. These two motives often form a push-and-pull where one is favored only at the last minute, leaving an imbalanced story where fresh, cutting insights are drowned out by political caricatures and implausible spectacles.

Line of Duty Season 6’s unsatisfying villain resolution was defended as a realistic endpoint for most corruption investigations; the pantomime of Apple TV+’s Liaison and Slow Horses secret agent stories all emphasize the perpetrators are not nation-states or real-life political forces but, in fact, rogue, independent — and crucially fictional — individuals.

It takes a few episodes to figure out how Netflix’s The Diplomat distinguishes itself from other half-baked international productions centering on people trapped in made-up-but-not-too-made-up political emergencies. The series follows an American ambassador being chucked into the deep end of highly publicized crises and smoothing bigwig egos after an act of aggression against British naval officers and easily convinces you of its incisive, observant perspective on how modern politics can lend to compelling drama. But while there are many reasons it merits more attention than Slow Horses or Liaison, only one is clear from the start — none of those shows starred Keri Russell.