Keira Knightley’s violent spy drama is daft but absorbing (original) (raw)
With Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire, it’s as much fun as it’s possible to have in Christmassy London while the snow is spattered with the blood of faceless henchmen
So, happy Christmas. It’s snowing in London, and in Joe Barton’s new espionage thriller Black Doves, retired “trigger man” Sam (a wonderfully wounded Ben Whishaw) has been recalled from his life in Rome, drinking champagne alone in bars, by his old boss, Reed (Sarah Lancashire). Meanwhile, Helen (Keira Knightley) goes about her double life as wife of the Defence Secretary (Andrew Buchan), mother to twins and expert knife-fighter and deep-cover spook for the aforementioned Reed.
But a terrible chain of events is triggered when Helen’s clandestine lover is murdered and she vows to avenge his death. Will they all survive the coming blood bath and be tucked up in time for Santa?
Being set at Christmas in a very twinkly London, it’s as though Love, Actually is playing out in an alternate universe. Imagine: Knightley’s child bride escapes her enforced marriage to a much older man and the creepy attentions of his best friend, goes into hiding abroad and, on returning to the UK under a new identity, she’s recruited as a spy by Lancashire’s outfit, which steals and sells secrets for profit.
Gabrielle Creevy, Kathryn Hunter, and Ella Lily Hyland on Black Doves (Photo: Netflix)
Knightley has matured into a wonderful, economical performer. The gurning of her youth (and she was so young when she started) is now replaced by real depth and interiority. She pulls off the enervated sass of the wife and mother with aplomb. Particularly when one interloper pushes her to her limits and she threatens to turn him into “a f***ing smoothie”.
Lancashire is criminally under-used, apparently given only “looming presence” as a character note and a fondness for stylish overcoats. I wanted to know much more about Mrs Reed than the odd cutaway to her chilly Thames-view penthouse provided, but there was too much else going on, plot-wise. Kathryn Hunter puts in a more animated (and better written) performance as rival spy boss Lenny Lines, skulking in a chip shop, smoking fags, smiling as she signs another death warrant.
London is part computer game – a nightclub shoot-out almost exactly resembles a scene from Grand Theft Auto – and part fairy-lit paradise. So liberal is the use of fake snow, I half expected it to start snowing indoors.
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As well as being a spectacular pow-thwack-boom buddy action series with Sam and Helen at its centre, the show does provide necessary Christmas sentiment around the work-life balance of the trained killer. The softest and most emotionally engrossing scenes are between Sam and his lost love, Mike (Omari Douglas), who split the first time around because of Mike’s preference for not waking up with a gun-wielding maniac smashing up his breakfast bar. Their chemistry is only occasionally featured but the most watchable thing on the domestic front.
For all its exuberance, Barton’s script is unafraid of cliché. “Don’t get sentimental,” one hit-person warns another. “She got sloppy. She’s too deep to pull out,” says Sam to Reed about Helen. But the plot whistles along at such a rate and there are Christmas trees everywhere – even lone assassins have their trees up – so it forces you to come along for the ride.
We do have to address the elephant in the room. Or rather the horse. A wise-cracking spy adventure set in London draws inevitable comparisons to Slow Horses. And while that’s not fair because nothing could come close to Apple TV’s flawless take on the genre, these Doves cannot hope to keep pace with writerWill Smith’s thoroughbreds when it comes to dialogue.
But with a cast like Wishaw, Lancashire and Knightley (and some equally starry cameos that I won’t spoil), this daft-but-absorbing six-parter gets you in its festive grip.
It’s as much fun as it’s possible to have in Christmassy London while the snow is spattered with the blood of faceless henchmen.
Black Doves is streaming on Netflix