The first season of this top-notch international thriller began with a bombing (of a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf) and ended with a bombing (a car explosion in central London, endangering several main characters). It’s understandable that one might require a refresher, considering that Season 1 dropped a year and a half ago in April 2023. (Ah, the vagaries of streaming series.)
The good news is that the taut, tart, and very witty Season 2 of The Diplomat is very much worth the wait, albeit shortened from eight to six episodes, and by the end will almost certainly have everyone thirsting for an already-commissioned third season. Let’s hope it’s not as long a wait.
For now, it’s just a joy to revel in the entertaining intrigue when Keri Russell (The Americans) reprises her Emmy-nominated performance as Kate Wyler, the seasoned foreign service officer turned reluctant U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. Uneasy with the post’s ceremonial trappings, this tough cookie might look a mess in her unguarded moments, but she is more than a match for the U.K.’s bellicose Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear), whom she now suspects may have had a covert role in the initial bombing and its devastating cover-up, aimed at taking out a shady Tory M.P. in cahoots with a Russian mercenary.
“The call is coming from inside the house,” Kate warns, frantic because her annoyingly smooth ex-diplomat husband Hal (a terrifically droll Rufus Sewell) and her embassy’s dedicated deputy chief Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) were both caught in the London blast. As the dust settles, the fog of imminent war continues to engulf Kate and her colleagues, including the formidable CIA station chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn).
Much of the season involves Kate and Eidra collaborating to expose the conspiracy behind the bombings, navigating a different sort of geopolitical minefield. Kate’s professional relationship with dashing U.K. Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) is complicated by their intense mutual attraction, which reaches an uncomfortable peak during a lavish 4th of July celebration at the ambassador’s mansion where a potential palace coup is being staged.
Series creator Debora Cahn’s plotting is ferocious, her dialogue delicious and her characters devilishly scrumptious, including Celia Imrie (Better Things) as Margaret Roylan, a wily Conservative Party operative with a dangerous reservoir of intel, and toward the end of the season, the great Allison Janney as the crisply calculating U.S. Vice President Grace Penn, who’s reportedly on the way out because of a family scandal and may be aware that Kate is in the running to replace her (again, reluctantly).
As they size each other up, in varying degrees of respect and dismay, Grace assesses Kate (victim of another wardrobe malfunction) with the withering observation that, “If you’re representing the interests of 300 million Americans whose healthcare is failing, whose planet is burning, whose future might get a little bit better or a little bit worse based on what you do in the course of a day, it’s best to look like the care of your trousers wasn’t more than you can manage.”
That’s our Kate, our beleaguered diplomat, who by the end of these six addictive episodes is buffeted by several bombshells that leave her and those around her shaken, quaking, while the viewer can only gasp in suspenseful (and soon to be impatient) delight.
The Diplomat, Season 2 Premiere (six episodes), Thursday, October 31, Netflix
