The Diplomat Season 4: How to Deal with Trump

How to continue a streaming Netflix series like The Diplomat in its 4th season of edge-of-your-seat American, British, and therefore world political intrigue and turmoil when the real world we see on our news screens is beset by an American President, Donald Trump, who creates crises home and abroad, with our allies and friends and enemies almost every time he opens his mouth?

You tell a story of an American President who embarks on a course of action even more dangerous than Trump's.

[And there will be some spoilers ahead ...]

Grace Penn (Allison Janney) became US President when the elected President died in office, and Penn as per our Constitution assumed the office.  At the end of season 3, she appointed Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) Vice President, and his wife Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) continued as our ambassador to the United Kingdom.   This season, President Penn is shot during a visit to London.  It turns out out that she wasn't very badly wounded -- physically -- and is back up and working as President in lightning-fast time.

Not badly wounded physically.  But we soon learn that her close brush with death did something to her mind, soul, brain, or whatever you want to call it.  And she makes a series of decisions that amazingly pit the United States not only against Russia, but the UK, NATO, and some crucial members of her cabinet.

Kate and Hal and a variety of people -- including Grace's husband Todd (Bradley Whitford, who plays a welcome larger role this season) -- increasingly try, in their disparate ways, to bring the President to her senses.  I won't spoil this season any further by telling you how that worked out, but I will say that wouldn't it be wonderful if people in the current Trump administration tried to do some of that with Trump and his policies of getting us into economic conflicts with our friends in Canada, setting ICE on murderous rampages in the US, starting an ill-conceived war with Iran, and the rest of his depredations.

I guess that's the difference between riveting fiction like The Diplomat and the harrowing reality of Trump.   But, optimist that I am, who knows, maybe watching this season of The Diplomat on Netflix will give some people in his administration a little more courage.

See also The Diplomat 1: West Wing Meets Bond ... The Diplomat 2: West Wing Meets Bond Part 2 ... The Diplomat 3: Thriller in More Ways Than One

My 2021 in-depth interview with Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle

The Diplomat season 3: Thriller in More Ways Than One

My wife and I just finishing bingeing the 8th episode of The Diplomat season 3 on Netflix.  I thought this third season was the best season so far.  Every episode was brimming with excitement and surprise.  Indeed, the only predictable thing in this phase of The Diplomat is the content and conclusion of every episode was unpredictable, and radically so.  This season couldn't have been presented more effectively than all episodes at once.  Each episode was a chapter in a book that you couldn't put down (in both meanings of the word).

It was also was the most romantically explicit -- not that it would be "R" rated, the only nudity was the British PM's backside -- but the romance was hot, inhabiting and invigorating just about every relationship and every episode.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

Indeed, there was a very big hint at the very end that Hal Wyler (perfectly played as always by Rufus Sewell) as VP of the United States was sleeping with Grace Penn, who became President after the death of Rayburn that was the stunner at the end of season 2, after Kate Wyler (perfectly played as always by Keri Russell) makes passionate love with Callum Ellis in a previous episode, and then in the final episode apologizes to Hal staying away from him physically and enthusiastically adhering to their "secret divorce" in  Ellis's arms.   And the First Man -- Todd Penn -- suspects something may be going on in bed between his wife (The President) and Hal (the Vice President), with the ending certainly suggesting that Hal is living up to his title as "Vice" President in more ways the one.

The thrill of The Diplomat is also political, and a political thriller, almost James Bondian (as I said about the previous seasons), this third season of The Diplomat certainly is.   Not only are the Russians and Chinese involved, but the US and the UK are on the edge of being at serious odds, after the truth comes out that the US was responsible for the sinking of the British ship with which the series began.  And the political thrills are lubricated by the lies that we see the US side cooking up to protect President Penn, blaming the deceased former President for something that Penn was actually responsible for when she was VP.

Also like the Bond movies, we're told at the end of The Diplomat season 3 that there will be a fourth season.  My only regret is that it won't be up on Netflix tomorrow.

See also The Diplomat 1: West Wing Meets Bond ... The Diplomat 2: West Wing Meets Bond Part 2

My 2021 in-depth interview with Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle

The Agency 1.1-1.3: Sharp American British Spy Mix

I saw the first three episodes of The Agency on Paramount+Showtime last night.  It's a spy-thriller narrative, with John le Carré feel to it -- that is, a complex story, with several layers of characters, and a central character who, for whatever reason, is operating and living not completely in synch with his/her superiors in the agency.

And The Agency does have this particular twist: the "Agency" is actually our American agency, aka the CIA, in its critically important London bureau.  This affords The Agency the best of both worlds -- the easy rudeness or at least bluntness of Americans, working in the streets, and flats, and eateries of London.  In that mix, The Agency has connections with both the Americans in Sheraton Taylor's Lioness (here's my review of the first season, and I'll be reviewing the second season in the next day or so) and the Brits in Joe Barton's Black Doves and Debora Cahn's The Diplomat.   If this gives you the impression that spy thrillers are very much in the air these days -- or, more precisely, in the stream -- you'd be completely right.

All of these series also have top-notch famous acting, and The Agency is no exception.  Richard Gere plays the bureau chief, Jeffrey Wright is right below him, and Dominic West is right above him as the CIA Director (I'll just note that the first time I saw West in an American role was in The Wire, and his American accent was so good I was surprised to find out he was British).  Michael Fassbender plays the beleaguered  agent-hero, and does a good job of it, as does Jodi Turner-Smith as his girlfriend.

Now, you'll notice I haven't warned you about spoilers, because I don't intend to give you any.  But I will say that The Agency in its first three episodes offers a provocative blend of intellectual puzzling and life-and-death action.   I'll be back here with more when I see more of the series.  In the meantime, I highly recommend it.

Black Doves: Snow White Thriller

There hasn't been a James Bond movie since 2021, but the Brits are serving up some top-notch thriller TV series in the closing months of 2024, with a second season of The Diplomat, the first season of The Day of the Jackal (which I'll review after it concludes in the weeks ahead), and the first season of Black Doves, a six-episode Netflix mini-series which I just finished watching and I'm going to review right here.

First let me say that the review will be spoiler free, hence no usual warning, and I said first season for The Day of the Jackal and Black Doves because both have been renewed for second seasons.

Joe Barton is the creator of Black Doves.  I first encountered his work in the 16-episode Lazarus Project (2020-2023) which was mostly the best time-travel narrative I've ever seen on any screen, so I wasn't surprised that Black Doves is a uniquely memorable thriller.  It takes place during the Christmas season in current London and manages to inject life-and-death into nearly every scene of snowflakes and jingling bells.  And though it has no time travel, it plays off events and people meeting ten years ago in recollections that seamlessly slide in and out of hugs and bullets in 2024.

The Black Doves are an independent spy organization that thinks itself superior to MI-6, the CIA, and any government organization, and probably are.  The highest person we meet in the organization is Mrs. Reed, played by Sarah Lancashire, whom I can't help thinking is on sabbatical as the British Police Sergeant she played so well for so many years on Happy Valley.  Keira Knightley plays Black Dove Helen Webb, happily married to the British Defence Secretary, with two adorable kids, but fully capable of loving someone else passionately at the same time, and adeptly deadly with a gun or a knife.  The other big star, Ben Whishaw (Q in the Daniel Craig Bonds), plays Sam, a flat-out but sensitive assassin, with a long-standing friendship and professional relationship with Helen, called in to help with the dangerously escalating situation at hand.

How's that for no spoilers, right?  But I will say that the twisty plot has lots of surprises, lots of lethal action, leavened with the sarcastic humor we've come to expect and enjoy in these kinds of British thrillers.  I'll 100% be back with a review of the second season, whenever it's up, and kudos to Netflix for putting the first season all up at once just a few days ago.

The Diplomat 2: West Wing Meets Bond, Part 2

I just finished watching the six episode second season of The Diplomat, which went up on Netflix on the last day of October.  Here's a review with no specific spoilers, and therefore no warning.

Let's begin at the end.  It's got the best surprise ending I've seen in at least the hundred seasons of any television show, on traditional network, cable, and streaming.  I don't know ... maybe make that five hundred.

Now, it's important to state the obvious, and keep in mind that this second was finished before the results of our election for President a few days.  So think of this second season as capturing the ambience and reality of the American President, VP, and staff maybe a year or six months ago, replete with a pretty old old American President, and a somewhat younger female VP.

I say American, even though the story takes place in Britain.  But American leaders appear in person and on video calls,  And of course the central characters are Kate Wyler, recently appointed US ambassador to the UK, and her husband Hal Wyler, former ambassador to Lebanon.  Unsurprisingly, both parts are played to perfection by Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell (who sounds, as always when he wants to, as American as I am).

Indeed, every bit of the acting was top-notch, especially Rory Kinnear as the British PM, and Allison Janney as the US VP.  But don't get me wrong.  I didn't love every last scene in this second season, such as when one character explaining something to another character says it's a case a correlation not causation, and the other smugly says no one really gets what that means.  In off-screen fact, that's actually a very easily comprehensible concept, with an obvious example: there may be sunspots when the stock market crashes (correlation) but that doesn't mean the sunspots caused the crash (causation).  (Here's a video from CNBC in which I explain the concept to an anti video-game crusader.)

Now banter like that, whether clumsy or astute, serves in this series to give it a cutesy, savvy flavor.  But the story is so bold and powerful, it doesn't need any help from the cutesy side.  Further, honestly, it couldn't have come along -- this second season -- at a better time for we Americans, and a lot of the world, as we try to make sense out of what just happened in our election.

See? No spoilers.  And do see this second season of The Diplomat.  After you've seen the first (and maybe read my review, see the link below).  You'll be in for a treat.

See also The Diplomat 1: West Wing Meets Bond

The Diplomat: West Wing Meets Bond

My wife and I just binged the first season of The Diplomat and loved it.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

To begin with, it seemed like for most of the first episode -- in fact, until to the very end of that episode -- we were watching an updated, 2023-rendition of West Wing, on a more global scale.  Which would have been very welcome. But the news at the end of this first episode made The Diplomat much more than that.  Almost a James Bond, without the central character being an MI6 agent with a license to kill.   So think The West Wing in politics, and Bond in terms of intrigue bringing the world to the edge of nuclear war, and that's even more welcome than just an updated West Wing.  More welcome, that is, as fiction on the screen, not of course as reality.

Speaking of which, I'd say The Diplomat is the best treatment of world politics in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine I've so far seen on the fiction screen.  The attribution of the attack on the British ship to the Russians instantly moves the whole rest of the story into the dilemma of what can be done to punish the Russians, given that Putin has already threatened, many times, to unleash his nukes on Russia's enemies in our off-screen world.

And then there are the twists, the biggest being the one near very end of final episode of this season, that the attack on the British ship was ordered by the British PM, apparently as way of enabling him to be a Churchill of our time, and show Britain and the world how his country deals with deadly aggressors.  I didn't see that coming -- not at all -- and yet it all makes sense in retrospect.

Before I get, though, to the big question, let me say that the acting was superb, on every level.  Keri Russell as the diplomat, Kate Wyler, US Ambassador to the UK, was outstanding, delivering her lines, her facial expressions, and body language with sheet perfection, exceeding her previous peak performance in The Americans.  And Rufus Sewell as her husband Hal was equally outstanding, though I wouldn't say he exceeded his performance in The Man in the High Castle, because that was in a class of its own.  So what I will say is his Hal in The Diplomat is his best performance, other than as a character added to the TV adaption of a science fiction novel that almost single handedly defined a genre.  And in The Diplomat,  Russell and Sewell, individually but especially together, were a pleasure to see.  And the same for everyone else.

Meanwhile, plotwise, I'm still not 100% convinced that their marriage wasn't working out, even though Kate explained that to Hal and us at least a dozen times.  But maybe that's the point -- that Kate feels the need to say -- most of the time -- that they can't make it as a couple, because she knows how deeply she loves him, and still hasn't really convinced herself that the two need to split.

And let's get to the very ending:  a car bomb in London that may have killed Hal, Stuart (Kate's second in command in the US Embassy), and Ronnie.  There are tears in Kate's eyes when she gets the news in Paris.  This means that at very least all three did not escape unscathed.  If I had to bet, I'd say Ronnie was killed and Hal and Stuart survived, both headed to the hospital.  All three dying would dramatically change the basis of the story -- and that would be more true of Hal dying than Stuart dying, so, of the three, I'd say Hal is the most likely survive.  But I'd put my money on seeing Stuart next season, too.

I also have no idea if a decision has even been made as to who will be returning in Season 2.  All I can tell you for sure is that my wife and I will be watching Season 2 of The Diplomat that day that it comes up on Netflix.