Simon Cellan Jones is a director worth watching for the actors: he keeps humour and awkward relationships alive inside busy television drama. We like that instinct, though The Diplomat needs more political scrutiny than good company can supply.
Fi1m perspective
Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell making each other’s lives difficult gives The Diplomat (2023) its strongest reason to keep watching. Simon Cellan Jones directed the first two episodes, helping establish a tone in which prickly relationships have as much pull as the political thriller. We enjoyed their friction more than the politics, because the pair remained good company while the series left too much insufficiently examined. That is a useful place to begin with Cellan Jones: he knows how to keep an audience interested in the people inside a thriller.
Cracker (1993) and Our Friends in the North (1996) were important early television credits, with the latter drawing on his strength with ensembles. His first feature, Some Voices (2000), came before Generation Kill (2008) opened the way to more American television. His work stretches from British social-realist drama into action, science fiction and political thrillers. What carries across those changes is a practical skill: handling an ensemble so the audience has somebody worth following, even when the surrounding story has plenty of other demands on its attention.
We should be careful about how much of a series’ success we assign to the director of its opening episodes. Russell and Sewell are the reason we recommend The Diplomat, and the less convincing politics remain a sizeable qualification. Still, establishing that mixture of humour and difficult relationships is consequential work. It gives the actors room to make a thriller enjoyable without requiring everyone in it to be agreeable, and suits a director frequently entrusted with pilots and early episodes.
The Family Plan (2023) brought him back to features and into collaboration with Mark Wahlberg. Arthur the King (2024) and The Family Plan 2 (2025) continued that feature work. The practical action and location work of The Family Plan and its sequel give him plenty to manage alongside the family relationships. Start with The Diplomat for Russell and Sewell, with no expectation that their company will make its politics more convincing.
Biography
Simon Cellan Jones (born 1963) is a British television and film director. He is the son of director James Cellan Jones and half-brother of journalist Rory Cellan-Jones.
He began his career as a production assistant in the mid-1980s on series such as Edge of Darkness. By the late 1980s he had progressed to directing, with credits including episodes of Cracker (1993) and Our Friends in the North (1996). His first feature film, Some Voices (2000), earned a nomination for Best Newcomer at the British Academy Film Awards. Other credits include Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004) and The Trial of Tony Blair (2007).
Later work encompasses episodes of Boardwalk Empire (2010), Jessica Jones (2015), The Expanse (2018), See (2021) and the first two episodes of The Diplomat (2023), as well as the feature films The Family Plan (2023) and Arthur the King (2024).
