The Russian submarine is on the fritz and as such remains at the bottom of the North Sea. Its fancy nuclear missile, meanwhile, has been purloined by the Americans in an operation presumably entitled Let\u2019s Flush Our Alliance With the Brits Down the Bog (and potentially instigate the third word war while we\u2019re at it). The prime minister, Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear), remains oblivious and a berk. The Russians are similarly unaware of the theft, for now at least, but the US ambassador to the UK, Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), predicts the eventual discovery will blast the Kremlin\u2019s ushankas skywards. \u201cRussia will come to get their sub,\u201d she warns her unblinking husband \u2013 and current US vice president \u2013 Hal (Rufus Sewell). \u201cThey will lose their shit when they find their apocalypse weapon is gone and they will attack the United Kingdom!\u201d \u201cHmm,\u201d replies Hal, who has, one suspects, shiftier fish to fry. \u201cMmm.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is where we find ourselves as The Diplomat returns for a fourth series of exquisitely fraught geopolitical skulduggery. Which is to say; we\u2019re stuffed. Poised on the precipice of Big War, a situation almost wholly attributable to the whims of the US president, Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Yikes. But also, in a very real sense, woohoo. Because there are few things as entertaining as The Diplomat in a bad mood, even if the stress induced by its doomsday theatrics requires much diaphragmatic breathing and the odd diplomatic sprint to the loo.<\/p>\n
Debora Cahn\u2019s transatlantic thriller has long been fascinated with the real-world consequences of its politicos\u2019 many huffs, its every twist infused with the suspicion that humanity is a bad hair day away from Armageddon.<\/p>\n
This time, the stakes and cortisol levels are even higher and Kate once again finds herself trying desperately to avert catastrophes political and personal.<\/p>\n
Fantastic \u2026 Nana Mensah as Billie Appiah, Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler, Allison Janney as Grace Penn, Neil Pearson as Fitzwilliam, Bradley Whitford as Todd Penn in The Diplomat. Photograph: Nick Wall\/Netflix<\/p>\n
So off we go to Windsor Castle, where we find the Penns and Wylers hissing and tutting at their motorcade having been diverted to the (currently king-free) royal estate after a group of protesters bunged up the M25.<\/p>\n
Kate wants Hal to tell the president to tell the PM that the Americans have taken the Russians\u2019 weapon. This will, apparently, \u201ccauterise the fucking mess\u201d. Hal, naturally, does not want to do this. \u201cI\u2019m not endorsing your confessional,\u201d he rasps, sulkily. \u201cIt\u2019s dumb.\u201d He is also unimpressed by his wife\u2019s assertion that he and his boss \u201clook shady together\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re jealous,\u201d he smirks. And she is, hopelessly so. Not just of her husband\u2019s increasingly close relationship with Grace, but also of the fact that Hal\u2019s job allows him to swank around doing clever-clogs global stuff while hers leaves her stuck in drizzly London, pretending to enjoy Trowbridge\u2019s garibaldis. Kate is also jealous of Grace, and Grace\u2019s husband, Todd (Bradley Whitford), and throbbingly thighed spy-hunk Callum Ellis (Aidan Turner). She would probably be jealous of the royal corgis, too, if they hadn\u2019t all been removed from Windsor before the Americans\u2019 arrival (a wise move: Grace would have mistaken them for sheep and tried to have them served \u201con rye\u201d).<\/p>\n
Several big things happen involving snipers, security breaches and globular Russians smushing their chins into their chest while mumbling about the fall of the west. The tension! The near-cartoonish absurdity! But, as always, it\u2019s the small stuff that proves most captivating: the perpetual microshifts in power; the twinges of affection in the interminable game of 4D chess that is the Wylers\u2019 marriage.<\/p>\n
The cast is, as ever, fantastic. Not least Whitford as the terminally uninterested Penn and Sewell as the self-serving Hal, the latter\u2019s performance a succession of fleeting tics conducted behind cheekbones that could dislodge the cobwebs from a proscenium arch.<\/p>\n
But shh, here comes Kate with another semi-flirtatious grumble re hubby\u2019s relationship with the president. \u201cI mean,\u201d she oozes. \u201cIt\u2019s dangerous. The two of you together, hurtling into the abyss \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Ambassador, with this saucy nihilism, you are really spoiling us!<\/p>\n
The Diplomat is on Netflix now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Russian submarine is on the fritz and as such remains at the bottom of the North Sea.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-803191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}