Christmas Carnage: Netflix’s Black Doves

Crime series all boast violence, and, while some of the violence is abhorrent and gratuitous some of it is framed as necessary and justified. In the Netflix thriller, Black Doves, the good hitmen and the good hit women mostly only kill when it can’t be avoided and when they have to kill to save their own skins. The bad killers have no sense of morality or ethics. They kill for sport and money. With the exception of Helen Webb (Keira Knightly), the good hitmen and women are gays and lesbians, though there is no kinky sex of any kind in the series. Violence yes, sex no.

Helen Warren is a heterosexual married to a British cabinet member and the mother of their lovely children. She cheats on her husband, Wallace Webb, (Andrew Buchan) and adds to the body count that mounts with each of the six episodes, which take place in posh London locations at Christmas. Knightly played Elizabeth Bennett in a recent film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice so you know before she appears on screen that she’s not going to be evil or sinister, though you’d be right to suspect that she’d have flaws which land her in trouble. She’s gullible and too easily deceived.

Her husband, Wallace Webb, is squeaky clean. Webb’s pal and partner in crime, Sam Young, (Ben Whishaw), a gay guy with an uptight Black lover, spares the life of  a young boy he’s supposed to kill, so you know he’s not a crazy killer. The episodes take place at Christmas, and as you might suspect there’s a Dickensian happy ending. Episode six reaches a crescendo with Christmas trees, Christmas lights, the Christmas spirit and scenes that take place in a London church. ‘Tis the season to be jolly.

Black Doves features an international espionage organization, the Black Doves, that collects and sells information to the highest bidder. The series also features a British Prime Minister, CIA agents, representatives of the Chinese government and gangsters galore. Ten Downing Street emerges rather spotless, the CIA and the Chinese less so.

Reed (Sarah Lancashire) plays the sinister head of the Black Doves, but her bark is worse than her bite. Helen Webb spars with her and out wits and out flanks her. The fact that Helen cheats on her husband, works for the Black Doves, kills her enemies and engages in subterfuge is all part of the job. She saves the British government, her marriage and her family with a lot of help from triggerman Sam Young, a deadly shot with a good heart who recruits two lesbian trigger women who provide comic relief in much the same way that fools provide comic relief in Shakespeare’s plays. The lesbians steal the show.

If you want a gruesome thriller watch Justice, which comes from Poland and that offers a cop, Tadeusz Gadacz, who was a police officer under communism and who would like to revive police methods now supposedly illegal and immoral. Gadacz does just that and solves the crimes, including a robbery and murders in cold blood, which the camera shows up-close and without a drop of empathy. They’re challenging to watch.

Justice is partially based on a true story: a bank robbery where three employees and a security guard were gunned down in cold blood. Black Doves is pure fantasy, a kind of Christmas carol for the holidays. What’s believable in Justice probably wouldn’t be believable in Black Doves, and what’s believable in Black Doves would not be believable in Justice.

In thrillers involving espionage, cinematic success is largely dependent on the setting, the identity of the killers, the hitmen, and the culture of the country that provides the political context for the crimes. What’s permissible in Poland isn’t permissible in England and visa-versa, at least by Netflix standards and rules. Maybe one day a British director will bring down-and-dirty Warsaw to London and spare us the happy ending. If you have the stomach for Polish noir, watch Justice. If you crave Christmas fluff watch Black Doves. You pay your money to Netflix and you make your choice.

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