Review of Netflix's The Diplomat: Season 4

Season 4 of Netflix's The Diplomat features standout performances from Keri Russell and Allison Janney, elevating the series to the best political thriller on television.

The following spoilers for season 4 of the Netflix series The Diplomat. All episodes are playing.

Chapter 4 of The Diplomat is, at its core, a series of one-on-one conversations where the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The president and vice president, first lords and chiefs of staff, prime ministers, ambassadors and domestic servants all engage in rich, dramatic dialogue that draws you in immediately and doesn't let go until the season goes dark. Intense close-ups, intense tensions, and carefully constructed language with double, triple, and sometimes quadruple meanings come to the fore, creating a tableau of geopolitical and internal conflict that is hard to look away from.

The Netflix series follows U.S. Ambassador to Britain Kate Wyler (Kerry Russell) as she navigates an international conflict while trying to save her marriage to husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). In Season 4, The Diplomat continues to be a thrilling thriller with great writing, great cinematography, and top-notch acting.

With a new series of episodes, the series brings what was already a series of high-stakes stories to a boil. After discovering that President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) conspired with Hal (promoted to Vice President in Season 3) to steal an "apocalyptic weapon" from a Russian submarine, Keith embarks on a campaign of bargaining and double-crossing to try to bring the situation under control. But all of this is quickly thwarted by a horrific assassination attempt on the president.

The scene that ends the first episode is a very realistic act of fictional political violence. There is no music, no building tension. Just two quick pops and a shirt suddenly covered in blood. It represents what The Diplomat does best: present the fantastic as subtle and limited while emphasizing universal dangers.

This ethos is especially evident in the still beautifully dysfunctional relationship between Kate and Hal. With the world burning and nuclear conflict just an itchy trigger finger away, Kate and Hal's marriage is the backbone on which everything else in The Diplomat rests. They are at once warm to each other, yet fiercely cold, trusting and incredibly suspicious, completely in love but always on the verge of mutually assured destruction. Sol and Russell continue to be dynamite, peppering their scenes with half-truths, knowing glances, and humor. Hal and Kate often can't stand each other, but they break up without consulting each other.

While Seasons 1-3 of The Diplomat focused more on Kate and Hal's relationship, Season 4 focuses on Grace Penn, Jenny's president, and the funny but secretly cruel Bradley Whitford, Todd's first nobleman to near-leader status. Their relationship is accompanied by familiarity with a cruel imbalance of power. Whitford, in particular, makes the most of the show's darkly comedic writing, imbuing her character with a kind of wit that belies a knack for slyly taking out anyone who gets between her and her husband. The post-assassination dialogue early in the season in which Todd dresses up as White House Chief of Staff Billy Appiah (Nana Mensah) is one of those two-handers that highlight the show's brilliant storytelling and acting.

As president, Johnny has never been better. Intricately designed and perfectly executed, Grace Penn is a revelation of a character. His steadfast and win-at-all-costs attitude is still intact in Seasons 2-3, but these traits are now shaped by a wave of uncertainty and a large amount of post-shooting PTSD. As Penn, Johnny is at once aggressive and grandiose, down-to-earth and borderline crazy, compassionate and utterly unforgiving. This character knows the consequences of his actions, but has yet to find a line that he won't cross.

While the four main characters drive much of the show's drama, The Diplomat has a supporting cast that fills out the beautifully constructed world of the show. Ali Ann and Ato Essandeh shine as Kate, Aidra and Stewart's embassy colleagues. Their budding romance is a twisted mirror of the show's other two central couples, showing what happens when a relationship heats up after you're already partners instead of the other way around. Rory Kinnear once again tears up the scenes as Prime Minister Nicole Trowbridge, particularly in a mid-season episode where she delivers a series of fantasy sequences leading up to her blackmailing resignation. Doctor Who's Jodie Whittaker emerges as the new prime minister late in the season, calmly creating a new set of problems for the US government.

Four seasons into The Diplomat, the writing is still ridiculously good. Showrunner Deborah Kahn and her team of writers combine personal and universal conflicts, sprinkle them with a bit of realistic humor, and constantly paint the mythical figures at the center of the show as real people.

A scene in the first episode of the show shows Kate following the President of the United States into the ladies' room to press him on an important matter. The story, in which Todd (who lands a London-based job) suspects that Kate is pregnant, unfolds in a way that's unmistakable for just about any half-baked pregnancy fantasy scenario you can imagine. An international coverage depends on whether one team of bureaucrats can convince another team of bureaucrats that they are bad at math. The climactic scene between Grace, Todd, Kate and Hal is straight out of Virginia Woolf's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It is interrupted by an over-eager cook. Kahn's roots in The West Wing are on full display here. But while the show hinged on optimism, The Diplomat subverts the feel-good mentality for a realism that's much more brutal, but no less entertaining.

The rest of The Diplomat is firing on all cylinders throughout Season 4. The scenery and cinematography are moody and rich. A late-season sojourn to Italy for the G7 summit allows the crew to pull off a series of long takes that would make David Fincher proud. All of these combine in a spellbinding series of episodes that are funny, hilarious, heartbreaking and downright heart-wrenching.

Some of the plots in The Diplomat can still be a bit far-fetched. The show is still trying to come up with reasons why US government officials have to travel to Britain all the time, and some realism is abandoned for dramatic drama. There are even a few storylines ripped right out of the smaller seasons of House of Cards. And yet, it's still an intelligent commentary on international politics as they are now. The show forces its audience to think with the undeniable truth that the people who run the world are human beings prone to being petty, stubborn, and lonely, and these traits often spill over into life-changing decisions for others.

The Diplomat is truly a show for our time, showing how intense and turbulent relationships—often no deeper than two people talking in the same room—can ruin lives, turn the mundane into the extraordinary, and have serious consequences for the world at large.

In Season 4, The Diplomat is firing on all cylinders. Starring Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford, new episodes prove that one of TV's best political shows just keeps getting better. The writing is superb, the production is rich and layered, and the supporting cast is stacked from top to bottom. With a sense of humor and a (mostly) realistic view of the world in general, The Diplomat is truly a show for our times.