There is—rare that it might be these days—such a thing as elegant popcorn. Of the TV variety, I mean. The sort of show that is smartly acted and sharply written but that knows (both in its heart-of-hearts and on its sleeve) that its primary mission is to entertain, which may mean inviting in some melodrama. Netflix’s new series, The Diplomat (April 21), is a sturdy example of the form: it’s intelligent and soapy and loopy all at once, a show of many influences that nonetheless walks at its own weird gait.

Much of The Diplomat’s tone can be explained by looking at the resume of its creator. Debora Cahn has written for The West Wing, for Grey’s Anatomy, and for Homeland, a near-perfect convergence of workplace walk-and-talk graveness and only-on-TV relationship entanglements. Cahn synthesizes all her skills into a compelling knot for The Diplomat, which stars Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, a dogged American state department strategist who typically navigates difficult war zones but, through a trick of post-terrorist-attack politics, is installed as the new U.S. Ambassador to the U.K.

The season is essentially about Kate finding herself in a relatively uninteresting place at a decidedly interesting time. A British aircraft carrier has been bombed at sea, by bad actors unknown. The world suspects Iran, but Kate and her cohort aren’t so sure. Can Kate hold off the aggressions of an ineffectual British Prime Minister (played with shrewd Oxbridge slime by Rory Kinnear) in order to stop her own country from entering yet another pointless and ruinous war? That is the not-at-all unserious question of the series. Yet there is a pep and lightness to the proceedings, a dash of Iannucci to add spice to the Sorkin-esque wonk porn.

The Grey’s of it all comes from Kate’s interpersonal obstacles, particularly the one created by her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). He’s a seasoned former ambassador and foreign policy operative who keeps meddling in affairs of state—either undermining or supporting his wife, depending on the particular moment. There is also the matter of Kate’s dashing British government contact, Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), who spars and collaborates with Kate in a way perhaps only a budding love interest can. 

Would an affair with Dennison really be an infidelity? Who’s to say. Kate and Hal are maybe divorcing, maybe not. They’re useful to each other’s careers, or disastrous for them. The Diplomat enjoys veering this way and that as its romantic plots bounce along, never quite letting us forget that these decidedly domestic antics are all set against the backdrop of potential global calamity. 

Maybe that is Cahn’s cleverly made, and slightly despairing, point: that so much of politics is a game pettily played by mercurial egotists with too much power. All the hijinks stand in stark contrast to their dire implications. The show is fun, with its torrents of wordplay and snarky point making, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Cahn does, on rare occasion, force us to briefly sober up and think about the world outside these well-appointed if stuffy rooms. But mostly she keeps the show interior, obsessed with its own fizz. 

Russell is a tightly wound marvel in the role, grooving on the offbeat writing and wild emotional swings. It’s a nice change, seeing an actor who’s often stern and cool and collected in a more frayed and frazzled mode—while still projecting an air of worldly competence. She delivers curse words beautifully, deftly hitting each emphatic “fuck” of a sentence. (She has ample opportunity to do so in these voluble scripts.) Russell is clearly stoked by the material, the way it meanders and whizzes at once. She’s having a good time, and thus so do we. 

Of course, some of this can be silly. While The Diplomat is, for the most part, keenly self-aware (it knows this is not exactly a realistic depiction of how matters of state are handled), on a few occasions the show gets a little too high on its own prowess and forgets itself. Ah, well. Such are the perils of occupying The Diplomat’s peculiar middle ground, somewhere between low function and high. 

But there are also pleasures in that position. At its best, The Diplomat seems to proudly hold no allegiances to either cable prestige or network melodrama. It happily borrows from both while fashioning its own thing: a British-American hybrid, an In the Loop in which everything actually means something, a Homeland where conspiracies are sussed out at cocktail parties amid the sexy-risky tenor of forbidden romance. There is nothing restrained nor otherwise diplomatic about The Diplomat, but it talks a great game.