Yuletide Spies
The last decade has indicated that moviegoers are less interested in classical spy stories than superheroes and multiverses; the James Bond and Jason Bourne franchises are taking a break, and the latest installments in the Mission: Impossible and Kingsman sagas turned out to be commercial disappointments. However, there’s no sense of fatigue when it comes to spies on television. This year, Taylor Sheridan brought his intensity to Lioness, Showtime offered an English-language reboot of The Agency, Jeff Bridges returned for a second season of The Old Man, and the popular British series Slow Horses finally gained some traction with American audiences.
It was surprising that Netflix didn’t already have an espionage show. The streaming platform has managed to consistently dwarf its competition by targeting an abundance of niche fandoms and delivering exactly what they want. Black Doves seemed like an attempt to capitalize on the newfound popularity of spy shows. The series stands out because of its unflinching classicalism. Themes about living two different lives and avoiding political surveillance haven’t gone unexplored within this genre, but Black Doves doesn’t waste any time in getting to the action. There are multiple headshots by the end of the pilot, proving to viewers that they won’t have to wait for the show to “get good.” More importantly, there’s a clever hook in the finale that sets up anticipation for the next batch of episodes, which will presumably appear on the service during the holiday season of 2025.
There’s motivation for Netflix to offer the most economic storytelling possible. Viewers need to be hooked to avoid swiping over to another program on the homepage, and there may not be the same captive audience that was willing to sit through seasons of The Americans or Boardwalk Empire anymore. Black Doves’ ruthless pacing isn’t a determinant, and it doesn’t cut corners on characterization.
The British thriller is centered on Keira Knightley’s Helen, a former secret agent who’s avoided discussions of her past through a marriage to the Secretary of State for Defense, Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan). They’re loving parents, but neither partner is particularly happy in their marriage; the Secretary is having an affair with his much-younger assistant, and Helen has engaged in a passionate liaison with a former ally in the covert “Black Doves” program. Wallace is able to avoid his wife’s obviously suspicious behavior for the sake of their children’s happiness, but Helen’s past becomes omnipresent when her lover’s killed. This prompts her to form a hasty alliance with the trigger-happy assassin Sam Young, played in a remarkable physical transformation by Ben Whishaw.
The show’s marketing appeal is its most clever conceit; all six episodes take place over the Christmas holiday. While this means that there can be action scenes set to Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby,” it also means that the protagonists are in a vulnerable position as they cope with the holiday blues. It’s understood by Helen that this is the one point in the year when she needs to be present for her children and husband; Sam is more susceptible than ever to growing serious with a young lover, who he may have otherwise treated as a one-night fling.
Black Doves has a significantly shorter episode count compared to most prestige television, but it also cuts out a lot of the fat. There’s surprisingly minimal context on the current state of British politics; this story could’ve taken place in 1984. As enjoyable as the second season of The Old Man was, it also included a serious reckoning with the ramifications of the Iraq War; likewise, Lioness is reliant on viewers’ knowledge of the ongoing debates about international terrorism. Black Doves is too finely written to be classified as “escapism,” but it’s also not interested in evoking memories of recent international tragedies.
Black Doves is intended to be binged, since those not paying attention to which characters may be informants or double agents could be lost when the series becomes more plot-heavy in its final episodes. That said, the action’s frequent and brutal enough that Black Doves can be appreciated on a purely visceral level. The fistfights and gun battles lack the fluid choreography of John Wick or the robust scale of a Mad Max film. These are messy, complicated characters, so it makes sense that they’d fight dirty. Watching a protagonist ruthlessly bludgeon an enemy combatant to death may be a challenging hurdle for most shows to overcome, but it works within Black Doves because the stakes are so personal.
Knightley’s casting is the most intriguing, as the former Pirates of the Caribbean star has ditched genre fare in the last two decades in favor of period pieces like Pride & Prejudice, The Duchess, The Imitation Game, and Colette. Knightley’s ability to retain emotional authenticity when saddled with dense, historically-specific dialogue prepared her for the “spy talk” of Black Doves. It’s easy for the mythology of covert operations to sound preposterous, but Knightley’s able to keep it relatively grounded.