TL;DR – While there is joy in watching this cast eat up the screen in every frame, this is a messier season as they try to transition to something different.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

The Diplomat Review –

My background is in International Relations, and it does not come up here as much as I would like, other than the occasional The Hitman’s Bodyguard jaunt. Well, today, given the situation of the world, I thought I would take a chance to have some wishful thinking in a world where the right things still matter, integrity still matters, to pretend for a couple of hours that everything hasn’t just gone to shit everywhere. But to understand why Season Three feels so volatile, we need to look at where Season Two left us.

So, to set the scene, at the end of Season Two, things went from bad to worse when the person, Grace Hagen Penn (Allison Janney), behind the scheme that blew up the British Ship in Season One has become the new President of the United States after the former suffered a heart attack during a conversation with Hal (Rufus Sewll). What was the conversation you ask? Well, it was informing him that his Vice-President may have committed a terrorist act on an ally, that very same Vice-President who is now the President of the United States. This is not a good day for Kate (Keri Russell) because the person she wanted removed just became the most powerful person in the world. Now, from here, we will be looking at the series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

Cast

Even before we get to the additions, this is one of the best cast shows on television now. Keri Russell is a force of power the entire time she is on screen. This has been true in the first two seasons, and it is just as true here. Rufus Sewell is his own brand of chaos in these shows, and it is added to here as his character is put on an inevitable collision course. When the show added Allison Janney last season and Bradley Whitford this season, it knew exactly what it was doing. They play such an oddly fun couple who also got one of the most delightful scenes in the whole season in the finale episode, that you could feel only worked as well as it did because of their years together. That bond that the whole cast is working in makes this show as good as it is.  

Production

The other thing that stands The Diplomat apart from a lot of shows out there at the moment is just how good it looks. Filming mostly in England gives you such a wide range of houses and manors to film in that have history dripping from every wallpapered edifice. There is a reason that shows like The Great and films like The Favourite have all chosen here. It brings the level of high governance that you could not pull off without considerable cost with sets. It also gives something tangible for all the characters to play off each other. Some conversations slipped into an assembly-line rhythm, losing the spark that usually defines the show’s dialogue.

Series Narrative

Where the series hits its highs and also some of its lows, comes from its overarching narrative. To be fair, I think it would have been difficult for any show to follow up on the bombast that was the final episode of season two. However, it did feel like you could feel a tension brewing all season as to what the show used to be, and the direction they wanted the show to go in. It did feel for a lot of the season that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, and I am not sure that always worked. The season’s tension between London and Washington is playing out in the very construction of the show.

A good example of this is the awkward six-month time jump that happens, which feels like there was an episode pulled, and the audience just has to go with it. Or the tension that arises as London stops being the focal point of the show. Thankfully, it collides back together in episode six and finishes the season on the right note. Indeed, if you want to do a betrayal, you might as well make it a nuclear betrayal, and I mean that on both a literal geopolitical level and also a metaphorical killer of a marriage in real time.  

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend the third season of The Diplomat? Yes, we would. The narrative did stumble a bit in places, but the sheer hubris that it is working with helped smooth over most of those issues. At the very least, that ending absolutely had me wanting to see what they do next season.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Diplomat
Directed by – Alex Graves, Tucker Gates & Liza Johnson
Written by – Debora Cahn, Anna Hagen, Eli Attie, Jessica Brickman, Peter Noah, Peter Ackerman & Julianna Dudley Meagher   
Created by – Debora Cahn
Production/Distribution Companies – Let’s Not Turn This Into a Whole Big Production,    Well Red & Netflix
Starring – Keri Russell, Rufus Sewll, David Gyasi, Ali Ahn, Rory Kinnear & Ato Essandoh
With – Allison Janney, Aidan Turner, Nana Mensah, Tracy Ifeachor, Bradley Whitford, Miguel Sandoval, Rosaline Elbay, Damian Young, Celia Imrie, Michael McKean & Alysia Reiner
And – Penny Downie, Graham Miller, Pandora Colin, Christian Ochoa Lavernia, Georgie Henley, Richard Dillane, Tim Delap, Adam Silver, Sandy Amon-Schwartz, Laurel Lefkow, Elijah Cook, Jun Kim, Nigel Gore, Emma Blyth, Octavia Chavez-Richmond, Carol Mazhuvancheril, Nancy Rodriguez, Janet Amsden, Paul Ferrico, Alexander Hanson, Michelle Greenidge, Sandy Amon-Schwartz, Kenichiro Thomson, Peter Polycarpou, Stephanie Mae, Jamie Treacher, Raphael Sbarge, Eugene O’Hare, Steven Pacey, Sandra Elizabeth Rodiguez, Thom Sesma, Shaun O’Hagan & Nathan Wiley
Episodes Covered – Emperor Dead, Last Dance at the Country Club, The Riderless Horse, Arden, Birdwatchers, Amagansett, PNG & Schrodinger’s Wife