| Worth seeing: | for the banter between the reunited best friends at the heart of this darkly comic and compelling spy series |
| Featuring: | Ben Whishaw, Keira Knightley, Adeel Akhtar, Agnes O'Casey, Andrew Buchan, Andrew Koji, Angus Cooper, Ella Lily Hyland, Finn Bennett, Gabrielle Creevy, Hannah Khalique-Brown, Isabella Wei, Kathryn Hunter, Ken Nwosu, Luther Ford, Molly Chesworth, Omari Douglas, Paapa Essiedu, Sam Troughton, Sarah Lancashire, Tracey Ullman |
| Key crew: | Alex Gabassi, Lisa Gunning, Harry Munday, Joe Barton |
| Channel: | Netflix |
| Length: | 55 minutes |
| Episodes: | 6 |
| Broadcast date: | 5th December 2024 |
| Country: | UK |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) is the wife of the British Defence Secretary Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan); she is also a spy for an organisation called the Black Doves, which sells information – including government secrets – to the highest bidder.
Her comfortable existence comes crashing down when China’s ambassador to the UK is murdered and one by one, three people who might know something about the death are knocked off in mysterious circumstances.
One of the three is a civil servant Helen’s been having an affair with, putting her potentially on the “at risk” list. Her Black Doves handler Mrs Reed (Sarah Lancashire) calls in one of the agency’s “triggermen,” Sam (Ben Whishaw) to keep a watchful eye over her.
With a CIA agent being the chief suspect in the ambassador’s death, the incident ignites the already fragile relationship between the US and China, as Helen and Sam try to solve the murder and find the ambassador’s missing daughter.
But Helen is more interested in avenging her boyfriend’s death – while ghosts from Sam’s past come back to haunt him, making it harder for him to protect Helen without his own ex-boyfriend being put at risk.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
This six-part darkly comic Netflix spy drama is a brisk piece of storytelling, as it bounces back and forth between the events on the night of the ambassador’s death – the period leading up to it – and many years earlier, when being Black Doves seemed to be much easier.
Helen’s recruitment by Reed and early training from Sam helped her settle comfortably into the world of deceit and death – a world that’s difficult to wriggle out of when things start to get out of hand.
The relationship at the heart of the series – between Keira Knightley and her gay best friend Ben Whishaw – is worth your time alone; Whishaw is particularly impressive in one of the more complex roles of his career – an assassin with a heart and a dark sense of humour.
It’s slick and stylish, with a range of central and supporting characters that ensure it’s a compelling watch, but the underlying plot is fiendishly complex and not entirely satisfactory. Quite how Helen has been able to lead this double life – combining being a ruthless spy, a doting political wife and mother of young twins is not entirely convincing – and when push comes to shove, she doesn’t seem to be the sharpest screwdriver in the toolbox anyway – although that does have some interesting consequences later.
There are plenty of conspiracies and cover-ups in government but the Black Doves don’t seem to know any more about them than the general public.
And one of the key problems is that it’s very clear that we’re meant to regard this pair as our protagonists – our heroes to root for – but they’re both undercover killers, in it for the money, with almost no redeeming features, except that they – perhaps – have just a little more of a conscience than some of their colleagues. There is not even any effort to give them any sense of morality beyond their own underworld. And even though Sam is the triggerman with a heart, he’s still prepared to put those he loves at risk to save himself – but I suppose you wouldn’t expect an assassin to be particularly honourable.
But the oddest quirk from a narrative point of view is that the big crescendo that we’ve been waiting hours for comes less than halfway through the final episode, leading to anti-climax after anti-climax as the main characters spend the last half hour just wandering around, having expositional conversations with each other – much of which is probably a clunky way to set up for the second series, which has already been commissioned.