The Diplomat bears the same relationship to 21st-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of early 19th-century England. The latter is Jane Austen as reimagined by a wannabe Jilly Cooper with a first-class degree in historical revisionism; the former is a bit like what The West Wing might have been if it had been written by Dan Brown and those behind the classic, early 1980s husband-and-wife mystery drama Hart to Hart.
But I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing. A lot of chattering-class types have been glued to The Diplomat since the first season when it started last year and have been recommending it as one of those series you just have to watch. What had put me off, up till now, was the fear that it might actually be as worthy as The West Wing – where its showrunner, Debora Cahn, cut her teeth as a writer.
Obviously I’ve never watched The West Wing, nor would I dream of doing so
Obviously I’ve never watched The West Wing nor would I dream of doing so. But I know what it’s about. It’s a liberal wish-fulfilment fantasy about a liberal US president solving global and domestic crises with his impeccably liberal yet also on occasion liberally pragmatic values, aided and abetted by his crack team of liberal aides. That sort of thing is not my cup of tea.
Nor did I think The Diplomat would be, either. In common with The West Wing it shares this hopelessly idealistic notion that if only we could get a few decent, capable people into high political office they would have the power and ability to make a difference. But it compensates by being so delightfully silly and so utterly disconnected from any sort of recognisable reality that it has the same effect on the brain as the champagne and sloe gin cocktail I once got served at a hunt meet: you’re so far gone that anything that happens thereafter is going to be just dandy.
Though it’s notionally set in London (mainly at the US embassy but also in Westminster), it’s not our London, or our political set up, but something out of a parallel universe, where all the usual rules of protocol and procedure can easily be suspended according to the exigences of plot.
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