BLACK DOVES – Season One

As happened with comic-book superheroes post-Iron Man (2008), John Wick (2014) likewise ushered in a cinematic obsession with secret networks, spies, and assassins. That obsession reached television and led to shows like Slow Horses, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Lioness.

Some of the new media based on this phenomenon are genuinely good. Apple TV’s Slow Horses, with its charming and quirky cast of characters, is one of my favourite dramas. But other shows and films based in the spy world aren’t worth mentioning. And despite the best efforts of a talented cast and some interesting direction and writing choices, Netflix’s Black Doves ultimately lands in the latter category.

The premise is the type of revenge plot we’ve seen before, given a slight twist. Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), the wife of the UK Secretary of Defence and secret spy for an organisation known as the “Black Doves”, discovers that her lover and two other people have been murdered. She vows revenge and teams up with her old friend, an assassin for hire, to find out who killed these people and why. As usual, it all leads to an intricate web of intrigue involving foreign affairs, a diplomat’s kidnapped daughter and multiple assassins trying their best to kill one another.

Though the premise is tired and the twists don’t prove too twisty in the end, that’s not the show’s main problem. A good revenge story is usually, at the very least, entertaining. For example, a revenge flick like John Wick works because we are given a reason to empathise with him. We see his grief after his wife’s death; they show us early on through flashbacks how much she meant to him, and then we see him bond with the little puppy his wife left for him. We feel a visceral, empathetic pain when his only source of comfort in grief is taken away.

In Black Doves, we’re supposed to feel the same sense of empathy with Helen. When she receives news that her lover is dead, her reaction to grief is believable; however, we never get to see why that grief is there. There are some flashbacks, but they’re mostly of Helen and her lover, Jason (Andrew Koji), in bed together. Much like last year’s The Crow (2024), Black Doves asks audiences to substitute sexual chemistry and passion for true love. It doesn’t work like that.

Perhaps if they’d made Jason an old flame from Helen’s past who only recently rediscovered her, and then shown flashbacks of them together before Helen was a “Black Dove,” the love story might have worked. But, try as they might, the writers simply can’t expect the audience to believe that a torrid affair over less than a year is “real.”

Torrid affairs aside, while there’s plenty of action and gratuitous violence, it comes with a severe lack of fun that makes the best spy entertainment work well. Sam (Ben Whishaw), Helen’s friend and former fight trainer, tries to induce as much charm into the thing as he can, and occasionally he succeeds. His deadpan jokes and sense of irony often land well. Likewise, a pair of gleefully psychopathic female assassins (Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy) hint at the kind of quirky, camp characters we could have had if the writers and director of the show hadn’t decided to take the whole thing much too seriously.

One thing the writers didn’t seem to take seriously is reality—at least not regarding guns, human reaction to noise, and general recognition of public figures. At one point, Sam kills a man in a restaurant with other patrons and can casually stroll out the front door of said restaurant with no one following him. Likewise, Helen, the wife of a well-known government official, can walk thinly disguised into a meeting of her husband’s peers, plant a bug, and walk out unnoticed with no one stopping her or saying, “Hey! Aren’t you the defence minister’s wife?” Equally implausible are Helen’s meetings with the leader of the Black Doves. These occur at well-known public landmarks, which are strangely devoid of locals and tourists that typically swarm those areas.

The woman Helen meets at these noticeably vacant public spaces, Mrs Reed (Sarah Lancaster), is emblematic of the issues with the series. While she’s a well-known and talented actress, Lancashire’s given nothing to do except relay information with a one-note coldness that is indeed psychopathic but neither campy nor fun. There’s nothing about this character that we can connect to or empathise with. And that’s true of everyone on the show.

That’s the main problem, ultimately, with Black Doves. The acting is fine and its plot holes are no more egregious than other action films and shows. But what bothered me is that it’s yet another medium showing horrible people doing horrible things to each other while displaying little empathy, heart, or other redeeming qualities.

Reformed criminals can make for fun heroes, but the criminals and serial killers in Black Doves show no genuine desire to reform. By the end, the only characters without blood on their hands have been put through hell by our supposed heroes, and yet we’re supposed to be glad that Sam and Helen won the day by lying, cheating, and killing their way through London? How many times will we be asked to root for characters who do evil without remorse? Before we say enough, how many anti-heroes will we put up with, even in the spy genre? Show us some flawed people who will ultimately do the right thing.

However, from the positive reception of Black Doves, it seems I’m in the minority in this view. That means we’ll have to sit through at least one more season of this and several more shows and movies like it before the rest of the population also reaches the end of its rope.

UK | 2024 | 6 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer: Joe Barton.
directors: Alex Gabassi & Lisa Gunning.
starring: Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw, Sarah Lancashire, Andrew Buchan, Andrew Koji, Omari Douglas, Sam Troughton, Ella Lily Hyland, Isabella Wei, Adam Silver, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett & Agnes O’Casey.