6/29/2023 0 Comments Bbc news dari afghanistan![]() The richest part of what is keen to be seen as a prestigious geopolitical drama is the portrait of a marriage past its peak but not in ruins. Which is tricky, as the pair have essentially separated but haven’t got around to, you know, actually leaving each other yet. He is relegated to, as he puts it, the job of “ambassador’s wife”. ![]() He is a fellow career diplomat and a former ambassador himself, a charismatic man who positively thrived on the attention of the job but whose combination of arrogance and principled actions have put him out of favour with the powers that be. She also has the more protean obstacle of her husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell also turning in a fine performance), to negotiate. ![]() What could be one-note irritation, Russell unpacks and makes real in every scene, neatly sidestepping every potential pitfall and danger of Kate turning into any of the stereotypes we have seen so many times before: Career Bitch, Stroppy Cow, Secretly Needy Real Woman. Certainly, she transcends her material as the increasingly frustrated Wyler, who is hamstrung by protocol when the people above her don’t make the right phone calls at the right time, resentful of the extra pressure on her as a female ambassador to dress nice, make nice and take part in photo ops, and eager to get back to her real work on women’s rights in Afghanistan. The Diplomat is a much less sophisticated affair than The Americans, but Russell is possibly even better in the former than she was in the latter. This is in the wake of a British aircraft carrier being attacked in the Middle East, causing many fatalities and inflaming all sorts of tensions between the UK, the US and Iran, which is suspected of carrying out the attack. She plays Kate Wyler, the US equivalent of an experienced civil servant, who is bounced by the president and his chief of staff into becoming the new ambassador in the UK. Now she is back as the lead in a glossy, efficient thriller called The Diplomat. It must have been a sweet reward for years of keeping the faith – in the business and in yourself. Then she starred with Matthew Rhys in The Americans, as one half of a couple of KGB spies deep undercover in Reagan’s America and blew everyone out of the water. Years and years of paying her dues – starting off in Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club, making her name playing the title character in Felicity at the turn of the millennium (who was largely defined by her curly hair, the cutting of which was largely blamed for the second season downturn in ratings) and working solidly but unspectacularly thereafter until 10 years ago.
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