A scriptwriter can spend two decades participating in the most relevant series on television and her name is always in the background, camouflaged among the crowd that make up the scriptwriters’ rooms and above all behind the shadow of the creators. But, when taking a look at Debora Cahn’s professional career, one cannot remain indifferent, both because of the level of production, the titles in question and, above all, because of the way in which this journey, from gig to gig, seems to have been led to create Netflix’s The Diplomat.
Let’s start with the topical item, the series that finally allows him to claim his name in the foreground. In The Diplomat, Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), a political and international relations expert who must become an ambassador to Afghanistan with the help of her husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell), who was a key United States ambassador until his reputation makes him an embarrassment to the White House. She wants to bring stability to the Middle East, a role that she has prepared for herself and that stimulates her. But, after a change of plans by the White House, Kate finds herself as ambassador in London and in the crosshairs of the president (Michael McKean), pending her potential.
Now, yes, we can talk about the journey of Cahn, the creator, as a writer and producer, who in one of her first jobs found herself in Aaron Sorkin’s writers’ room in The West Wing of the White House. She joined the political series during the fourth season, shortly before Sorkin was fired for his drug abuse. There she, without a doubt, learned how to expose complex political conflicts with rhythm, taking advantage of the spaces, without letting the seriousness (or potentially boring) of the explanations mean giving up her sense of humor.
And it is that Kate can take for granted that in the United Kingdom she will have to attend many galas and drink many teas with cakes in society meetings, aware that it is a comfortable position with which important donors are usually compensated, but she soon discovers the difficulties in his job when a British military ship is attacked in the Mediterranean.
With the help of handsome Foreign Secretary Dennison (David Gyasi), she must deal with headline-seeking and volatile Prime Minister Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear). One of the virtues of the script is that, even when one gets lost before the mentions of the different intelligence services, the plot is followed with agility, avoiding at all times falling into repellent dialogues, a terrain that Sorkin, his former boss, used to inhabit
Let’s go back to Cahn. After working on The West Wing for five seasons, he reported to Shonda Rhimes on Grey’s Anatomy, where he entered the heyday of the series in its third season and lasted through its tenth season. What is noticeable in The Diplomatic? In his ability to introduce personal plots, even a bit of entanglement and romantic comedy, in the middle of professional meetings on which, for example, the start of a possible war with nuclear weapons depends. Here not only Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell and David Gyasi participate, but also Ato Essandoh as Stuart, Ambassador Wyler’s right-hand man on British soil, and Ali Ahn as Eidra Graham, the head of the CIA in her unit in London.
And finally, the screenwriter also wrote in the last two seasons of Homeland, in which she was an executive producer. This experience is evident in the self-confidence of the already mentioned dialogues around international conflicts, intelligence reports and the search for evidence to confirm the authorship of the attack suffered by the British, but also in the treatment of scenes of tension.
This is one of the most disconcerting elements when facing The Diplomat: once the viewer assumes that the work moves through the genre of political comedy, a sensation fueled by the funny dynamics of the Wyler marriage and how uncomfortable it is finds Kate in a country that requires a minimum of femininity and elegance, the series can delve into a more Homeland-style thriller without losing coherence and verve.
But, even understanding the existence of the series as the logical consequence of Debora Cahn’s career, there is a reference that cannot be ignored, either because it could have influenced La Diplomatática or because it could be an element to convince the indecisive public. : the parallels between this work and The good wife by Robert and Michelle King, both formally and conceptually. They may have similarities in their contextualization of the plots in a vocabulary-specific workplace setting, their hybridization between comedy, drama, episodic conflicts, and serialized plots, but especially in their portrayal of a marriage in crisis.
Because, by the time the viewer meets the Wylers, they are convinced that they are at a point of no return: Hal must help Kate stabilize in her role as ambassador to later formally divorce and start a new life. But nothing is so easy when the chemistry and rapport between them is so obvious, with Hal who, as an intelligent and charismatic man that he is, is not inclined to assume an existence in the background.
Both series make up a fantastic portrait of male privilege and the tensions that arise when women try to occupy the spaces of power that traditionally belonged to them. And both also understand the desire, especially with a David Gyasi who must play the most attractive political representative that has ever been seen on the small screen. It is not only a matter of physique, but also the way of talking about it, of approaching the space with Keri Russell and how the camera understands the attraction from understanding and not from feeling.
In short, and beyond the comparisons, La Diplomática is a clever series: it finds a balance between the rhythms of comedy, international conflicts and uses traditional television structures to row in favor of rhythm and the relationships between characters. It has a first season that, unfortunately, is so easily seen that it orphans the viewer before its time. There are eight episodes that are very well used but that, when referencing series of such quality but also longer, they can know little. Where are the 13 or 22 episode seasons when you need them?
