Over two high-stakes seasons, this drama about a US ambassador to the UK who finds herself moonlighting for the president and the entire state department has proved itself to be a rare beast: a political thriller that is frequently excellent, often erudite (a character once referred to another as “the Hecate of Highgate” instead of just calling her a stirrer), but which also requires the total and utter suspension of your disbelief. Question any of it for a second – as I did in the final episode of this third series, when the new US president asks the prime minister whether Chequers is his family’s ancestral seat – and it begins to crumble. But if you file it firmly within the category of spicy geopolitical soap? Boy oh boy, is it good.
We pick up where season two left off, and the aftermath of a car bomb that badly injured Kate’s (Keri Russell) on/off husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell). Meanwhile, British PM Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) is still apoplectic about the actions of Tory fixer Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), who proved to be not only an irritant with a direct line to the Daily Mail, but the mastermind of a false-flag operation that implicated Russia. Of course, what our canny diplomat Kate knows is that Roylin was acting on behalf of someone even more influential: US vice-president Grace Penn (Allison Janney), whose job Kate was eyeing up last season. Everyone has more pressing concerns, however: when he found out the truth about Penn, President Rayburn carked it in the final moments of season two, leaving Penn to step up and creating a vacancy for VP. Surely Kate is a shoo-in as Penn’s deputy, especially with this much collateral on her?
