As Keir Starmer ponders how best to ensure that the incoming Trump administration remains committed to maintaining that relationship, the series offers some potentially useful (and historically accurate) food for thought.

Where season one explored a familiar popular culture trope – a transatlantic love triangle – season two turns its attention to matters of geopolitics.

Here is the story of an unusually close bilateral partnership, one which is informed by history (Churchill is often seen glaring from a painting in the ambassador’s London office), shaped by the fear of a common enemy (Russia) and sustained by an apparent willingness to share just about everything.

Underpinning it all, says The Diplomat, is a common language and the strategic utility to Washington of Britain’s position in the north Atlantic.

As Irish writer George Bernard Shaw once supposedly declared: “England and America are two countries separated by a common language”. In The Diplomat – in which it is uttered at one point by Wyler – its underlying assumptions are certainly apparent. Matters of transatlantic difference in policy, perception and protocol, frequently emerge during heated conversations. Britons and Americans anger, antagonise and annoy each other.

Yet despite the various disagreements the relationship nonetheless remains “special” throughout. In fact, the pacey dialogue (a la The West Wing, on which the series creator, Deborah Cahn, was a producer) ultimately delivers an assertive retort to Shaw’s tongue-in-cheek quip.

Whether it’s Wyler and foreign secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), or vice-president Grace Penn (played by West Wing veteran, Allison Janney) and prime minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear), all the major protagonists, British and American, talk to each other with more than a hint of familial directness. In one scene, Penn actually has to stop herself from finishing Dennison’s sentences.

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For the full article by Dr Sam Edwards visit the Conversation.

ENDS