I’m just so happy for Keri Russell. Think how she must feel. Years and years of paying her dues – starting off in Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club, making her name playing the title character in Felicity at the turn of the millennium (who was largely defined by her curly hair, the cutting of which was largely blamed for the second season downturn in ratings) and working solidly but unspectacularly thereafter until 10 years ago. Then she starred with Matthew Rhys in The Americans, as one half of a couple of KGB spies deep undercover in Reagan’s America and blew everyone out of the water. It must have been a sweet reward for years of keeping the faith – in the business and in yourself.
Now she is back as the lead in a glossy, efficient thriller called The Diplomat. She plays Kate Wyler, the US equivalent of an experienced civil servant, who is bounced by the president and his chief of staff into becoming the new ambassador in the UK. This is in the wake of a British aircraft carrier being attacked in the Middle East, causing many fatalities and inflaming all sorts of tensions between the UK, the US and Iran, which is suspected of carrying out the attack.
The Diplomat is a much less sophisticated affair than The Americans, but Russell is possibly even better in the former than she was in the latter. Certainly, she transcends her material as the increasingly frustrated Wyler, who is hamstrung by protocol when the people above her don’t make the right phone calls at the right time, resentful of the extra pressure on her as a female ambassador to dress nice, make nice and take part in photo ops, and eager to get back to her real work on women’s rights in Afghanistan. What could be one-note irritation, Russell unpacks and makes real in every scene, neatly sidestepping every potential pitfall and danger of Kate turning into any of the stereotypes we have seen so many times before: Career Bitch, Stroppy Cow, Secretly Needy Real Woman.
She also has the more protean obstacle of her husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell also turning in a fine performance), to negotiate. He is a fellow career diplomat and a former ambassador himself, a charismatic man who positively thrived on the attention of the job but whose combination of arrogance and principled actions have put him out of favour with the powers that be. He is relegated to, as he puts it, the job of “ambassador’s wife”. Which is tricky, as the pair have essentially separated but haven’t got around to, you know, actually leaving each other yet. The richest part of what is keen to be seen as a prestigious geopolitical drama is the portrait of a marriage past its peak but not in ruins. Love, affection and support all survive in some form – they are just not quite adding up to more than the sum of their parts as they used to. Put it this way – they sleep in different rooms but he still smells her armpits when she can’t decide if she needs to shower before another flesh-pressing engagement. I know, I know – it sounds closer to the ideal than most of us get.
It is of course impossible for Hal not to give her advice, and his ambassadorial manspreading soon leads to conflicts in her job, as he arranges “impromptu” public meetings with unsuitable people, inveigles his way into places he ought not to be and gets himself semi-kidnapped instead of staying at home and deciding what art to hang on the residence’s walls like a good wife should.
Kate might feel better about her situation if she knew that it was all one big stress-test to see if she has the makings of a vice-president. Her right-hand man Stuart Heyford (Ato Essandoh) is secretly reporting back to the White House about her suitability for the job, while shepherding her through her current one, and leaving her as much time as possible to defuse the US-Middle East tensions and stay in touch with the Afghan embassy in Islamabad.
After a slightly turgid opening episode, The Diplomat becomes a hugely enjoyable ride and, while Russell rules the show, everyone around her is a brilliant addition and support. Like Martin Sheen in The West Wing, you only wish she could be playing the role in real life too. Imagine how much better off we’d be.
• The Diplomat is on Netflix
