Netflix Review: ‘Black Doves’ is an Edge of Your Seat Spy Thriller with Top-Tier Performances and Humor

Being a spy can’t be an easy job, but the people who are best at it make it look effortless. Whether cinematic depictions are reflective of real-life espionage operatives is another question altogether, but it’s certainly a genre that’s fun to watch on TV. From Girl/Haji and The Lazarus Project creator Joe Barton, Black Doves is a sleek series about an agent deep undercover fighting to protect her loved ones that makes a frequently-explored subject feel entirely fresh and invigorating for the entirety of its six-episode first season.

Episode one opens with the killing of several individuals, one of whom was involved in a relationship with Helen Webb (Keira Knightley). The wife of Wallace (Andrew Buchan), the defense minister, and mother to twin children, Helen is also a Black Dove, working covertly for Reed (Sarah Lancashire) to gather intelligence on her husband. Helen soon finds herself in the crosshairs of the same unknown figures who killed her lover, and she’s thrust into a fight for survival that reunites her with triggerman Sam (Ben Whishaw), who has someone of his own he would do anything to protect.

This six-episode series gets off to a fast and furious start with Helen racing into action when she realizes she’s become a target. The hand-to-hand combat featured is extraordinarily quick and impressive, and it’s most remarkable to see this mother of two go from charming political figureheads and fellow mothers to holding nothing back in a desperate attempt to kill or be killed. She’s cool under pressure and more than capable of holding her own in any matchup, even if the odds are very much stacked against her and she doesn’t know who her real enemy is.

What helps to make this show so appealing is that there are webs of relationships that all affect each other, with operatives working for different agencies and spying on the “good guys” to keep a stream of intelligence, like Helen monitoring her husband, who is theoretically supposed to be on the same side as her organization and hasn’t done anything to betray his country. Similarly, after Sam kills one of the assassins sent for Helen and later meets her partner Williams (Ella Lily Hyland), who vows to kill him, they decide to team up to take out another threat even if their paths are ultimately meant to end in a shootout to the death.

Knightley, who tried action early in her career in Domino, is a formidable fit to play Helen. It’s nice to see the actress typically known for portraying nicer characters unleash her pent-up aggression verbally on Reed and physically on those who come for her and threaten the lives of her children. It’s a star turn that works exceptionally well, and she’s masterfully paired with Whishaw, an Emmy winner for A Very English Scandal who most recently impressed TV viewers with This Is Going to Hurt. Fresh off playing Julia Child in Julia, Lancashire is a sarcastic delight, as is Kathryn Hunter as another power broker of sorts. Familiar faces like Agnes O’Casey and Paapa Essiedu stand out in supporting roles, and Hyland is a particularly terrific find, along with Gabrielle Creevy, also seen in Three Women, as another character wrapped up in this mess.

This is a show where people go from being seemingly perfectly safe to irreversibly dead in seconds, and the unpredictable nature of that thrill ride is indeed quite enthralling, with a heaping supply of humor to make it all go down more easily. The first season’s six episodes are packed with content and character development, and the use of extensive flashbacks to reveal how each player got to where they are is quite effective in this case. While audiences may blow through the six or so hours of season one far too quickly due to its very bingeable nature, the good news is that season two was already ordered way back in August. There are so many spy shows on TV, but this action-packed, highly entertaining show is definitely at the head of the pack.

Season Rating: 9/10

Awards Buzz: With an abundance of TV programming for voters to choose from, it’s hard to know if this late-in-the-year entry will attract attention, but Knightley and Whishaw, who is a past Emmy winner, would certainly be deserving of any accolades along with the show itself, which should compete in the Drama categories due to its preexisting renewal.