Five political dramas to watch after ‘The Diplomat’ season 3
Horrors on Netflix this Halloween are not just supernatural, but also political, as is evident from the shocking finale of The Diplomat season three.
But if your appetite for political thrillers is far from extinguished, you should give a chance to the equally captivating slate designated to the genre.
For a change of air, Best of Netflix is bringing you the five ultimate political dramas without focusing solely on series or movies. Instead, we’re about to throw you under the bus of hard-hitting political titles that come from both spaces, giving the cinephiles as much to look forward to as the series lovers.
All you need to do is keep some time in your hand for the marathon, since this is not another no-commitment ride. So, make sure you don’t have distractions during this binge session, as one blink-and-you-miss moment could disrupt the flow forever.
Five political dramas to binge after The Diplomat season 3
Operation Mincemeat (John Madden, 2021)
Operation Mincemeat, AKA The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II, is a gripping war-drama film set in 1943 during the peak of World War II. The 2021 film depicts the deception operation led by the British in an attempt to mislead and distract Nazi Germany regarding the true earmark of the all-out Allied invasion of Southern Europe.
Operation Mincemeat primarily focuses on two significant British intelligence officers, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu and Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley, who came up with a plan to ensure the troops were driven away from their primary target, all while ensuring the bait didn’t backfire, ending up in a massacre.
The Night Agent (Shawn Ryan, 2023-Present)
With Netflix adaptations, you never really know what to expect. But viewers don’t need to fret while taking a chance on The Night Agent, which is based on Matthew Quirk’s novel. The high-octane political thriller, starring Gabriel Basso as an FBI agent grappling with a relegation to the mundane Night Action desk, where he has to monitor a phone designated for the program.
The phone is considered the last-resort emergency contact for spy agents in the field, which barely rings, until one night, it does, with former tech CEO Rose Larkin on the other line. Rose’s tie-up with the Night Action Program ties to her aunt and uncle, who were covert agents themselves. But having been just ruthlessly murdered by assassins, Basso now has to take charge to unravel the political conspiracies plaguing his line of operation.
Black Doves (Joe Barton, 2024- Present)
Black Doves on Netflix is yet again another spy thriller series where the stakes get higher with every new episode. Starring Keira Knightley, who recently made waves on the streamer for The Woman in Cabin 10, the Netflix series turns Christmas time into a complete nail-biter.
Black Doves tells the story of Helen Webb, a seemingly ordinary woman who secretly lives a double life. While on the surface, she’s the wife of the British Secretary of State for Defence, secretly, she’s a “Black Dove,” a clandestine sleuth hailing from a secret spies-for-hire organisation that trades the most sensitive information, whether industrial or political, with the highest bidder. But her life turns upside down when her secret lover is brutally assassinated, although she’s convinced it’s not something related to her undercover identity.
Bodyguard (Thomas Vincent and John Strickland, 2018)
Bodyguard is undoubtedly one of the most successful political thrillers in the television landscape, but it’s just as much of a character-driven drama. The series focuses on police sergeant David Budd, a troubled war veteran grappling with symptoms of PTSD following his time in Afghanistan. Now working on behalf of the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, he’s tasked with a high-profile assignment as the PPO of the greatly controversial Home Secretary, Julia Montague.
Budd is not exactly a fan of Julia’s political perspectives, who is on a mission to introduce an unwelcome and quite intrusive bill on surveillance. But despite his despise, he cannot let the professional and personal clash, which makes their political chemistry all the more intriguing and, to some extent, pulse-pounding.
Munich – The Edge of War (Christian Schwochow, 2021)
The last pick is on Netflix for the movie lovers out there, from the catalogue of political drama, is Munich – The Edge of War. The period spy thriller is set during the 1938 Munich Conference, although the movie tends to fictionalise the events. The historical drama stars Jeremy Irons as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and George MacKay as a British civil servant who serves as a secretary to Chamberlain.
The latter unwillingly gets embroiled in a plan to overthrow and expose Hitler amidst his plans for a far-fetched European conquest, where he is confronted with the uncanny: a former friend from Oxford who’s now a German diplomat and also part of the anti-Nazi conspiracy.