‘Black Doves’ Is A Fun Holiday Treat With Surprising Depth

Black Doves, Netflix’s British action-thriller series from Giri/Haji’s Joe Barton, is technically a Christmas show. The holiday has nothing to do with the plot, which is a bloody and increasingly knotty conspiracy involving the governments of three nuclear superpowers, a clandestine spy agency, and an international crime family, but its presence is felt everywhere. Keira Knightley (Boston Strangler, The Imitation Game, The Aftermath), who stars alongside Ben Whishaw (A Very English Scandal), can barely move without bumping into a Christmas tree.

This isn’t important, really, but it gives the series a specific feel, especially with the Blighty setting. Knightley herself told the Radio Times it was “like Love Actually, but we kill everyone.” That’s about as succinct and on-point as capsule summaries get. And you can probably tell from that whether or not you’d like the series.

But there’s more to it. Quite a bit more, truth be told, which is both the best thing about Black Doves and the worst, depending on where you’re standing. The push-pull of competing genres, clashing responsibilities to both action and character development, world-ending stakes filtered through local relationships, even something innocuous like a double-agent’s ping-ponging between upstanding upper-class housewife and ruthless spy; there’s a lot going on here, a lot of it at the same time, and not all of it works, especially not in unison with everything else.

But little of this matters for a simple, uncomplicated, and almost anti-critical reason – Black Doves is just flat-out entertaining. It’s pacey and action-packed and funny and sometimes, at its best, surprisingly poignant, almost in spite of itself. And it has that essential one-more-episode quality that defines great streaming shows, the kind that sneak into global top 10 lists and stay there for weeks under everyone’s noses because they’re so fun to get swept along by.

Plot-wise there’s nothing new here. Knightley plays Helen Webb, the wife of a Conservative Party higher-up named Wallace (Andrew Buchan – Alex Rider) and the mother of their twin children, Jacqueline (Charlotte Rice-Foley) and Oliver (Taylor Sullivan). But Helen’s secretly a spy for the clandestine Black Doves, an independent outfit led by Reed (Sarah Lancashire playing extremely against type) and working, exclusively, for the highest bidder, whoever that might be.

Helen has been in situ for years, feeding the Doves information about the upper echelons of the British government, which creates an image of the organization in my mind that isn’t entirely dissimilar from the Bene Gesserit in Dune: Prophecy. But Helen has made a mistake. She was carrying on a secret and ill-advised affair with a man who ends up being assassinated. He may or may not have been connected to a wider conspiracy involving the Americans and the Chinese. And Helen may or may not have told him too much.

Helen wants revenge. Reed wants the situation to go away quietly. To assist with both things, the Black Doves bring in Sam (Whishaw), a former agent turned triggerman-for-hire whose relationship with Helen goes back years. Lots of people are subsequently killed in a variety of entertaining ways.

Ben Whishaw in Black Doves | Image via Netflix

While it’s Knightley at the center of the plot, it really is Whishaw who steals the show. He’s both the funniest character and the most achingly sincere as he tries to balance the demands of his job with a failed relationship that he’d like to rekindle, all while feeling thoroughly trapped in circumstances he can’t control. And Sam’s underworld connections rope in several eccentric supporting players like the brilliant Kathryn Hunter as a local mobster called Lenny Lines, and a pair of assassins named Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy) who bicker like a married couple but remain totally unphased by everything going on around them.

It’s hard to maintain a dramatic center in all that, but Whishaw is it. The writing helps, though. The back-and-forth patter is very funny but often whip-smart too, and whenever it’s time for a dollop of sincerity Barton provides it with aplomb, the same way he did in Giri/Haji, which is one of the best things made by anyone, ever. There’s nothing here to rival that show’s monochrome slow-motion interpretive dance sequence, but there are plenty of formal flourishes that help to move things along.

Funnily enough, Black Doves has already been renewed for Season 2, and while you can see how that might work, I can’t help but feel it would have been ideal as a one-off holiday binge. It has that frivolous quality to it, and I’m not sure a lot of what works here – the unexpected team-ups, shock deaths, double-crosses, sudden turnarounds, etc. – would still work a second time. But that’s for Joe Barton and the folks at Netflix to figure out. What we’re left with in the meantime is a surprisingly smart, funny, and engaging thriller that ticks all the right seasonal boxes. Merry Christmas.

Read More: Black Doves Ending Explained