It seems as if I’ve been waiting years for two streaming favourites to return: The Diplomat (Netflix) and Somebody Somewhere (HBO/Crave).
It has actually only been a year and a half. Those actors and writers strikes from 2023 contributed to the delays. Both shows feature intriguing leads at their best, surrounded by other interesting characters. Otherwise, a ton of differences. Both have short seasons, which doesn’t help when a new season finally arrives.
The challenge: other than the fact that I remember liking these shows, I don’t exactly remember how things left off the last time I watched them.
Let’s start with the second season of The Diplomat, which returned Oct. 31 with six hour-long episodes. All can be streamed immediately on-demand, and that is part of what’s wrecking things for me. It was April of 2023 when we last watched this series. I think we binged all eight of those first season episodes over one weekend.
This is a dense, fast-paced series featuring Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, the ballsy, whip smart, sloppily-dressed, somewhat reluctant ambassador to The United Kingdom. Her dashing husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell) plays her career diplomat hubby who is at loose ends but trying to be helpful to his possibly future vice president wife as he soldiers on without his own posting.
Russell’s character has a staff led by Stuart, her by-the-book deputy chief of mission, played by Ato Essandoh. A key ally is Eidra (Ali Ahn), a CIA opertive. Kate has to figure out the blunt British PM, Towbridge (Rory Kinnear). Then there’s the handsome foreign secretary, Austin (David Gyasi).
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There are so many secondary recurring characters as well, all played by veteran actors. They include Celia Imrie as troublemaking former UK campaign manager Margaret Roylin and Miguel Sandoval, glimpsed on screens as US Secretary of State Miguel Ganon. Michael McKean — yes, he of Lenny & Squiggy and Spinal Tap fame — shows up now and then as the President of the United States, which no longer seems that far fetched. By episode five they’re joined by Allison Janney as the Vice President, a nice promotion from her days on The West Wing.
The first season ended with a car bomb explosion injuring two and killing two other characters. And here is where this series momentarily lost me. Netflix cues things up with a brisk montage of highlights seen previously on The Diplomat. It is like they threw all eight episodes in a blender and set it to blur. If you kept your thumb on the fast forward button you’d have the same odds of catching up in a coherent manner.
At least with shows such as Show Horses, each season has its own beginning, middle and end. The Diplomat is more of a continuing serial, so you will likely be in a bit of a fog 90 minutes or so into this new season if you don’t go back and watch at least the final episode of Season One.
One reason to carry on is the relationship between Kate and Hal. Spoiler alert: Hal was one of the folks injured in the car blast. He’s been in deadly situations before, we are told. While he lies bleeding, Kate climbs onto his gurney and gives him a leg up, one of hers, cuddling him through his scars and bruises. Guess she has diplomatic immunity. Soon he is off his crutches and back gladhanding sponsors and poking his nose into the planning of a lavish Fourth of July party taking place at the American Embassy.
Thing is, in Season One, Kate and Hal’s marriage seemed done. She was very much headed for a foreign affair with the handsome and willing secretary. Nothing stays secret for long on The Diplomat, as all the key characters seemed briefed on who’s dropping their briefs.
Hall knows something is up but these adults have seen and weathered worse. The two have wonderful fights early in Season Two. You believe they really are married! He’d go to sleep in the other room but after the car bombing, he needs her to reach down and untie his shoes. The next day she pulls his arm around, tucks his hand under her ribs and helps him breathe through a harrowing fireworks display that is too much for his still shell-shocked psyche.
Meanwhile the CIA operative and the deputy chief of mission have their own canoodling to rekindle, or not. (Fun fact: those actors, Ahn and Essandoh, are an item in real life.) As Season Two progresses, both seem on the verge of helping ambassador Kate out of a job.
The scene stealer for me, however, is Kinnear as PM Towbridge, who is part Monty Python-era John Cleese, part brash Conservative pitbull. Sarcastic, witty, offensive, always in a hurry. He’s the villian who some see as a the hero, which keeps everybody off balance in Season Two.
The Diplomat is bloody entertaining, plays on a big canvas and boasts feature film-like production. If you like Season Two Season Three is already in production. I don’t know what it costs to make each episode, but I do know this: it is way, way more than they spend on Somebody Somewhere.
This seven episode third season has already been declared the last for this quiet, very personal little series. Bridget Everett plays Sam, a woman in her 40s trying to find happiness.
Somebody Somewhere is a Peabody award-winning dramedy about a makeshift family of misfit toys. There are no jet setters on this series, which returned Oct. 27. These are the folks in the fly over States, specifically Kansas (although it is shot outside Chicago). Sam gets in her truck and visits her gay friend Joel, played by Jeff Hiller. Her newly divorced sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison) is all the immediately family she has left, and they tolerate each other in a sisterly fashion.
Season Three finds Sam in a bad way. Joel has a new love, Brad (Tim Bagley), and isn’t as available for spontaneous movie nights. Joel and Brad have moved in together, and are busy trying to decide if they should do important things such as decorate with fridge magnets. Trish has struck it rich selling cushions with very vulgar (and funny) sayings. She’s exploring her dating options, ditching Sam left and right. Meanwhile, the sisters have rented out their parent’s house to an Icelandic man of few words who apparently doesn’t smell great.
Last season’s newlyweds, Fred Rococo (Murray Hill) and Susan (Jennifer Mudge) also have little time for Sam, and the big girl is very, very depressed by the end of Episode One.
No, it doesn’t sound like fun, but you watch Somebody Somewhere for its authentic moments. You have to watch it, however, one week at a time, and I’m fine with that schedule. The series doesn’t race by and allows you to visit these friends for almost two months.
Sam’s world seems to allow a freedom of sexual orientation one might not expect to find in a rural town in Middle America. Brad and Joel, for example, bond at a church. Much of the series is based on Everett’s own journey as a comedian/cabaret singer growing up in Manhattan, Kansas. Perhaps there are some lifesfyle aspects of Big Manhattan that can be found in Little Manhattan if you take the time to look. Everett has worked both towns and seems to have learned along the way that life can sometimes be painful and disappointing, and other times joyous and affirming.
There will be happier episodes ahead, including a Thanksgiving dinner, and more of Everett finding her voice as an singer. This Somewhere is a strangely winning, healing in hard times, small town world, one where there are few diplomats but plenty of hope and truth.
