TV Review: "Black Doves" (Season 1)

The new spy thriller from Netflix features a trio of stunning performances that help to anchor some of its more outlandish narrative turns.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

---

I’m a sucker for a good spy thriller, and I’m also a sucker for anything that has Ben Whishaw and/or Keira Knightley in it. You can imagine my delight, then, when I first heard about Black Doves, a slick spy thriller starring these two great actors, along with Sarah Lancashire. I honestly knew nothing more than just its genre and still I knew that I was going to love it. Indeed, it hooked me from the very first scene and, along with my partner, I binged it in a matter of days (it’s only 6 episodes long, after all).

The series begins with a series of murders, as three different people are killed in quick succession with one of them, Jason (Andrew Koji), making a call to someone before expiring. It turns out that the person Jason was calling was none other than Knightley’s Helen Webb, who has been leading a seemingly calm and respectable life as the wife of a very high-ranking member of the Conservative government. It soon becomes clear, though, that there’s far more to Helen Webb than meets the eye. Far from being just the wife of a powerful Cabinet minister, she is instead a member of a secretive (and sinister) organization known as the Black Doves, whose purpose is to sell secrets to the highest bidder. As Sarah Lancashire’s Reed–who seems to be very high up in the group, if not its actual leader–says to Webb when she first considers joining their ranks, they are not ideological; they are simply capitalist. Soon Helen is joined by Whishaw’s Sam Young, a gunman for hire, and together they try to figure out who killed Sam and why, even as Reed tries to keep America and China from going to war with each other.

As the season goes on it becomes clear that there are many moving pieces to this puzzle, and the viewer is left in as much of a quandary as Sam and Helen as to what exactly is going on and who was ultimately responsible for Jason’s death. Along the way, both of them have to contend with both their past and their present, as they also feel their loyalty to the Black Doves, such as it is, undermined at every turn by the very people that employ them. There’s more than enough plot to go around, and the series moves along at a very brisk (and sometimes narratively nonsensical) pace, but it’s anchored by some terrific performances that allow us to buy even the most illogical plot contrivances.

Keira Knightley is the perfect person to play someone like Helen Webb, a woman who has a mysterious but deeply troubled past and yearns for something more than her present. As the season goes on she shows more and more agency, and there’s a particularly striking (and funny) scene in which she manages to take down a younger agent intent on taking her place. It’s played for laughs, but it also shows that there’s an iron core to Helen that should not be underestimated.

Whishaw is likewise perfectly cast, with his ever-present wounded beauty well-suited when it comes to playing a gunman with a conscience. Sam’s scenes with his former lover Michael (Omari Douglas) are particularly wrenching to watch, since we in the audience are well-aware that their little island of happiness is doomed to be temporary, that Sam’s brutal and violent life will always come back to haunt him. This is a man, after all, whose first job was assassinating his own father. He has a lot on his mind and on his shoulders and, no matter how far or how fast he runs, he’s never going to be able to get away. The life of violence and death will always reach out to pull him back, and you can see that recognition in his haunted eyes and ever-more-lined visage.

I’m a relative newcomer to the Sarah Lancashire fanclub, having adored her portrayal of Julia Child in the gone-too-soon HBO Max series Julia, but she really shines in this series. Reed is truly a block of ice, someone who never lets one dollop of sentiment cloud her judgment or her ruthlessness when it comes to dealing with underlings who refuse to do as they’re told. This isn’t to say that she’s always coldhearted when it comes to her employees, however, and there’s a scene near the end where she shows that there might be more softness to her than she’s been willing to let on so far.

The supporting cast is also uniformly excellent. Andrew Buchan portrays Helen’s husband Wallace, a man who appears at first to be a cad but in fact really does seem to love his wife. Kathryn Hunter, who has been having quite a time of it lately playing strange and unsettling characters, is in her element as Lenny Lines, who has a potent hold on Sam and his future. Tracey Ullman also makes a memorable if brief appearance as Alex Clark, whose son has played a significant role in the deaths that set the plot in motion.

For all that it is a violent and often dark series, there are many moments of lightness and black humor in Black Doves. After all, it is British, and if anyone excels at dry humor in the midst of chaos and bloodshed, it’s the British. Lenny’s two henchmen, Williams and Eleanor (Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy), also make for a nice injection of humor, and I hope we get to see more of them in a second season.

Overall, I found Black Doves to be as full of twists and turns and surprises as I could wish from a spy thriller. At the same time, it also allows us to invest in these characters, to want the best for them, even though they have both done some very reprehensible things. The world that they inhabit is one where violence can erupt at any moment, leaving blood spatters streaked across faces, but both Sam and Helen seem to want something more, even if they can never quite capture what it is that they desire.

Moreover, the first season of Black Doves also manages to tie up its various plotlines in a mostly satisfactory manner by the finale and, while the last episode does feel a bit stretched out, it’s clear that it’s trying to both clear the table and also make sure that there’s plenty for the next series to build upon. Thankfully Netflix has decided to give the series a second season, and I’m even happier to report that I will be eagerly awaiting its release.