The Shallow State

Rufus Sewell (left) and Keri Russell as Hal and Kate Wyler, in The Diplomat

Previews for Netflix’s The Diplomat are edited in a rapid hip-hop style, implying a series anchored on explosions and sex, like a Tom Clancy thriller. Both of these are in relatively short supply. Instead, we get a series anchored on the machinations of the unelected bureaucrats whose presence always lingers beneath normal politics. These are the members of the “deep state” we’ve been coached to fear in recent years.

Kate Wyler, a longtime member of America’s professional diplomatic corps, has packed her bags for Afghanistan. She’s spent her career identifying and exploiting weaknesses in other nations’ political organizations; this skill has rewarded her richly, while also serving American interests. So she’s baffled when, on the eve of the departure, President Rayburn calls her into his office. The President has an alternate offer: the ambassadorship to the United Kingdom.

Start with how showrunner Debora Cahn casts Keri “Felicity” Russell as Kate Wyler. Early in her career, Russell was so thoroughly pigeonholed by her beauty that an over-hasty haircut nearly derailed her first starring role. But she’s now forty-seven, an age when Hollywood puts most women out to pasture. Cahn casts Rufus Sewell, an equally famously attractive showcase, as Kate’s husband Hal, but he’s a man. His greys are “distinguished.”

The show’s characters comment that the U.K. ambassadorship isn’t usually considered a serious diplomatic posting. Embassies in America’s NATO allies are usually plum appointments for prestigious political donors—a fact considered shocking when George H.W. Bush dispensed ambassadorships that way in 1989, but banal now. Skilled diplomats historically run things in America’s friendly embassies, but wealthy, semi-retired palm greasers get the prestigious chair.

Except things have changed. Business executives face steeply reduced pressures to retire at a certain age; Charles Koch, Sheldon Adelson, and Donald Sussman continue running their corporations well into their seventies and eighties. A two- or three-year hitch in some plush London mansion, shaking hands with King Charles, hardly seems like an appropriate career capstone anymore. Especially when, as now, international tensions remain permanently peaked.

This series contains numerous pointed references to current events. Kate Wyler is appointed ambassador by a rough-hewn but semi-progressive American President who’s terrified of being perceived as old. President Rayburn wants Kate to stage-manage America's relationship with Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge, whose folksy, off-the-cuff manner makes him popular with British voters. However, events hint that both Rayburn and Trowbridge are craftier than they appear.

David Gyasi as U.K Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison, with Keri Russell, in The Diplomat

Everything described occurs under the constant shadow of war. President Rayburn picks Kate for the British ambassadorship because somebody’s just hit a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, killing forty-one sailors. The British public is braying for blood, and PM Trowbridge’s off-the-cuff comments only make that more likely. Except that professional diplomats like Kate know the evidence doesn’t add up. The obvious suspects are, in this case, hardly obvious.

It’s impossible to overlook the direct real-world parallels. Streaming TV, with its relatively short lead times, can comment in ways that legacy scripted media can’t. While the next presidential election promises to feature two very old and broadly unpopular White men, the British public has watched three consecutive Tory PMs disintegrate rapidly, and possibly a fourth. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war drags interminably, and Putin has been indicted for war crimes.

PM Trowbridge is played by Rory Kinnear, who last appeared on Netflix in the Black Mirror premier episode. If you missed that, he played a Prime Minister who, to appease a terrorist, is compelled to fuck a pig on live national television. Though Trowbridge is a darker, angrier figure than PM Callow, surely showrunner Cahn recognized this parallel. Because Trowbridge specifically, and elected officials generally, come across as crazed pig-fuckers.

Again, online trailers spotlight explosions and sex. But after the opening scenes of episode one, the explosions are largely limited to verbal sparring and personal conflicts. This is a series about the backroom log-rolling sessions that voters never see, but which make politics happen. The characters quarrel, swap favors, and submarine one another regularly. Elected officials like Trowbridge and Rayburn are there to be managed, not to call the shots.

But if this is the feared “deep state,” it really isn’t that deep. Far from a finely tuned engine of political know-how, this show features a complex nexus of wounded egos and resentment. Other than a brief on-screen appearance by an Iranian ambassador, this entire show features American and British characters, nominally allies, who constantly play one-upmanship games and personal horse trades. The deep state is, apparently, really quite shallow.