Black Doves: Netflix’s UK spy thriller should be your new summer addiction
Monday, 9 December 2024
REVIEW: Worried about what’s going to keep you gripped this summer once The Day of the Jackal is over? Netflix has you covered.
Black Doves (now streaming) is a stunning six-part UK spy thriller that teams the brilliant Ben Whishaw (This is Going to Hurt) with a compelling Keira Knightley (Official Secrets, Boston Strangler). Heck it even throws in Happy Valley’s Sarah Lancashire for good measure.
It begins with four deaths. Tabloid journalist Phillip Bray, bar worker Maggie Jones, Ministry of Justice employee Jason Davies and the Chinese Ambassador Chen’s demises initially seem unconnected, but while her husband, UK defence minister Wallace (Broadchurch’s Andrew Buchan), is concerned about the fallout from the final of the four, especially as Beijing deny rumours that he “had more smack in him than a nun with a ruler”, Helen Webb (Knightley) is shocked to learn that not only has someone murdered Jason, but that her superiors knew she was having an affair with him.
“Was I the reason he was murdered? Was I the target?” she frets to her handler Mrs. Reed (Lancashire).
“You were reckless and stupid. Not only are you now in danger, by association, you’ve compromised our entire organisation,” is the pithy reply.
“If you pull me out, I’m taking the children. Try and stop me and I’ll kill you myself,” Helen defiantly retorts.
Yes, for a decade now, Helen has been a spy at the heart of British government. Initially, Wallace was just a job, a backbencher MP to keep tabs on, but then the children and promotions came and Helen found herself with a long-term mission – and a marriage. But Jason (Andrew Koji) offered something else – passion, an escape – and whoever killed him will now have to face Helen’s wrath.
Keen to avoid her going rogue and maintain their asset at an increasingly volatile moment in global geopolitics, Mrs. Reed recalls Helen’s former driver, assassin-for-hire Sam (Whishaw) from his self-imposed Italian exile. His main task? Find out if someone really is after her and remove them as a threat. But Sam is returning to London with his own baggage and unresolved issues which may just compromise his ability to assist, let alone keep Helen from conducting her own “investigations”.
A heady cocktail of Bodyguard, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Red Sparrow and Killing Eve, Joe Barton’s (The Lazarus Project) tense, taut tale is filled with twists and turns, superbly executed set pieces and killer one-liners.
“I have a Nutribullet,” Knightley’s Helen menacingly warns a home invader at one point, while she memorably responds to Sam’s astonishment at her unflinching ability to re-locate her shoulder with the throwaway, “you should have seen when I pushed two human beings out of my vagina on the same afternoon”.
The banter between those two is a particular highlight, as is Sam’s flailing attempts to avoid his past and balance a social life with the task at hand.
In a way that’s Black Doves’ point-of-difference and particularly addictive quality – that it presents its twin protagonists as messy and flawed, complicated and compromised. Keeping their “double lives” separated is a full-time job that doesn’t always go smoothly. Helen has to calm an upset child, while simultaneously hiding from twin attackers, while Sam is forced to ride to her rescue, despite having had an indulgent evening with friends involving “five glasses of sav blanc and a line of cocaine that I think might have actually been ketamine”.
It all makes for fabulous viewing, that you’ll be delighted to know has already been renewed for a second season.
Black Doves is now available to stream on Netfix.