Keira Knightley Goes Undercover in the Darkly Comic ‘Black Doves’

When we meet Helen Webb in the first episode of the new Netflix miniseries Black Doves, she seems a picture-perfect example of a politician’s wife: impeccably styled, cheerful, tending to home and children while her husband, Wallace, works as Great Britain’s defense secretary. She has it all, and makes it look easy. Because no one could be that perfect, though, we soon find out that Helen, played by Keira Knightley, is in fact a freelance spy who has spent the past decade of her life getting close to Wallace (Andrew Buchan) as he rises up the ladder of the English government. And when her family isn’t looking, the practiced smile can be replaced with a vicious snarl, where she might warn her longtime handler, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), that if she gets between Helen and her kids, “I will kill you myself. I will bleed you right fucking now.”

Like Helen, Black Doves is balancing two contrasting identities. In some moments, it’s a darkly comic romp where Helen and her old hit-man friend, Sam (Ben Whishaw), banter their way through the mess that’s created when the interests of the U.K., China, and a local crime syndicate come into conflict. In others, it’s a grimmer portrait of the emotional toll of choosing a life of violence and deceit(*). As you might expect, one of these is a lot more fun to watch than the other.

(*) This is also the main theme of the new Paramount+ drama The Agency, which has an all-star cast, but also confusing plotting and an almost oppressively dour tone. 

Black Doves was created by Joe Barton, whose England-Japan culture-clash crime drama Giri/Haji was a Netflix highlight of early pandemic days. This is a less thematically ambitious story, but Barton is definitely good at the pulp-fiction aspects even when he’s not trying to say something deeper.

Because Knightley has spent so much of her career playing extremely serious characters in extremely serious dramas, it’s easy to forget that she first captured notice for her lighter, spunkier performances in Bend It Like Beckham and the early Pirates of the Caribbean films. Barton gets some of that verve out of her, particularly whenever Helen and Sam are matter-of-factly working their way into and out of various dangers. Between his work as Q in the James Bond films and his BAFTA-nominated performance in the mid-2010s drama London Spy, this is familiar territory for Whishaw. He inhabits it well, and has excellent chemistry not only with Knightley, but with Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy as a pair of rival assassins who keep turning up at inopportune moments.
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In an exchange that sums up the best parts of the show, Sam tells Helen, “Listen, I have just left a very enjoyable evening with some old friends to come and murder a hired contract killer for you. So let’s tone down the judgment a tad, shall we?”

Sam has his own tragic backstory, including a complicated relationship with his own triggerman father, as well as a failed romance with Michael (Omari Douglas). But on the whole, Whishaw gets more of the wry comedy to play, where those moments come more in isolation for Knightley. When they pop up, though, she more than rises to them, like a scene where she defeats a killer who has invaded her home, and suggests she will use all of her fancy kitchen equipment to turn him into a smoothie.

Helen’s origin story, her complicated feelings about the intermingled real and fake parts of her life, and her grief over the murder of her lover, Jason (Andrew Koji from Warrior, who appears frequently in flashback), just don’t land with the same force as the banter or the action sequences. And the interlocking mysteries eventually prove so complicated that Barton has to pause the story for a bit toward the end so Reed can explain everything in a monologue.

But there are far worse actors to have deliver exposition than the great Sarah Lancashire (late of Happy Valley and Julia), and there’s enough liveliness sprinkled throughout the story — including a soundtrack packed with Christmas songs, since the plot unfolds in late December — to compensate for the less-thrilling dramatic parts. And while this particular story is wrapped up by the end of the sixth episode, the surviving characters are left in positions where it’s easy to envision Black Doves becoming a project that periodically returns for different holidays. If so, hopefully Barton leans even further into the parts that work best.

All six episodes of Black Doves begin streaming Dec. 5 on Netflix. I’ve seen all six.