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May 1, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

Check out The Diplomat on Netflix if you haven't already, absolutely cracking stuff. I had a "oh I'll see what this is like..." moment with starting it and then burned through the whole series in a week (as you do).

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The algorithm is way ahead of you. It served up the diplomat to me as soon as I was finished with the night agent.

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I'm now going to start the Night Agent!

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Keri Russell is always good.

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i always get my tv recommendations from here. Because the top shelf offerings on streaming platforms is maybe 5-6hrs each tops and i'm always on the lookout for rainy day material. And to compound it we have profiles for myself, my partner and the kids. But everyone just uses mine by default (in addition to using theirs) so the adjacent stuff i'm interested in gets buried in recommendations for weird stuff like LGBTQi chinese fantasy soap opera (think Monkey but without the comedy and has a whole lot of impeccable hair and runs for what seems like 8 series of 120 episodes so the AI bot goes "you watch a lot of this stuff - here's some more"), the anime that comes up is sometimes good though.

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This is why nobody but me is allowed to watch the television in our house

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That's why you need to rigorous enforce different users on the account using their account, and why the algorithm for my Amazon account continues to through up bodice rippers due to my partner ordering Georgette Heyer novels.

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May 1, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

Anecdata, but your bureaucrat is spot on. A friend only realised that her father was a spy after he retired. All through childhood he'd come home from work every day and say that he read a bit, thought a bit and then wrote a bit. That's all.

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I watched the first two eps following your reco. It is enjoyable so far, but some of the dialogue is cringe. The Diplomat is top notch.

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"A realistic spy thriller would probably follow some drab bureaucrat into his office for 7.52 hours a day, and look over his shoulder while he or she read a bunch of reports and news clips" wasn't that the basis of George Smiley in John le Carré's "Calls for the Dead"?

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