Here comes “Black Doves,” premiering Thursday on Netflix. How is this thriller different from other thrillers? It does what most do, in terms of action and suspense and complicated plotting, and does them very well, but what’s more interesting is that it’s also what might be called a “thriller of the heart.”
To begin with, it’s the one with Ben Whishaw — he’s played Hamlet and Richard II (and also Marilyn Monroe) — and Keira Knightley, whom you’ve loved since “Bend It Like Beckham,” and Sarah Lancashire (“Julia,” “Happy Valley”), who, like Knightley, is an OBE, or officer of the Order of the British Empire. I’m sure Whishaw will get to be one eventually if he wants it.
And it’s a Christmas story, not a “Die Hard”-type “at Christmas” story, but a legitimate, if twisted Yuletide tale, with arcs, in their unusual way, fitting for the season. Sentimental without irony, it manages to balance relatable relationships with hot- and cold-blooded murder. (It’s something of a feat.) There are Christmas trees, too, and Christmas presents, and Christmas music, and children in a nativity play, and a scene where three characters tied up and in danger of losing their lives discuss Christmas movies, and one where a lonely person looks longingly through a window at an ex-boyfriend’s happy family, as though “Love Actually” were full of killings and kidnappings and Bill Nighy’s character had a sideline in assassination.
It is also — perhaps mostly — a love story. Most everything not dedicated to evolving its central mystery, or mysteries, which keep becoming different mysteries — as mysteries will — is about love and friends and family, and the friends who are as good or better than family. (Keeping people safe is a motivating factor.) When things aren’t exploding in choreographed hand-to-hand combat or noisy firefights, there is much discussion of feelings and relationships, to the extent that double lives allow. (It’s an emo thriller.) That the series is bracketed by the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” a Christmastime story of love between broken people, might tell you something.
Knightley plays Helen, who is married to Wallace (Andrew Buchan), the British minister of defense.
(Ludovic Robert/Netflix)
Knightley plays Helen, married nearly 10 years to Wallace (Andrew Buchan), the British minister for defense and in line to become the next prime minister; they have twin children, and when we meet them, the family seems a model of comfortable, ordinary domesticity, with talk of inhalers and advent calendars. It’s quickly established, however, that Helen is not Helen (she was formerly called Daisy, but something else before that), and that she is a Black Dove, a member of a secret organization, that, in the words of her employer, Mrs. Reed (Lancashire), deals “in the currency of information. We gather it and we sell it” — to the highest bidder, whoever that may be.
“We’re a capitalist organization,” Mrs. Reed tells Helen, in a flashback to her job offer. “Not an ideological one.”
“Well,” Helen replies, “capitalism is an ideology.”
As we begin, Jason (Andrew Koji), with whom Helen has been having an affair, is shot dead on London’s South Bank, one of three murders that appear to be linked. This prompts Mrs. Reed, in the know about Helen’s connection to Jason, to call her sometime “triggerman” Sam (Whishaw), who has been out of the country for seven years, back from Rome to keep Helen, with whom he has a deep connection, safe. (Sam is a sensitive sort of killer, who worries sometimes that he might be a psychopath.) Up until now, Helen’s life as a spy has been a quiet one, routinely funneling information gleaned or stolen from her husband to Mrs. Reed. That is all about to change.
Meanwhile, giving Wallace something to worry about, the Chinese ambassador has been discovered dead, and his government is not satisfied with the British authorities’ conclusion that it was an accidental overdose. What’s more, his party girl daughter, Kai-Ming (Isabella Wei) has disappeared.
The heroes, such as they are, are also villains by conventional standards, but there are worse villains for contrast. All seem willing, if not necessarily eager, to do awful things; all are working for money or personal satisfaction or out for revenge, which is a form of personal satisfaction, or an attempt to protect someone else. If there is not all that much daylight between the factions, morally speaking, we know who and what to root for at any given moment.
Sarah Lancashire plays Mrs. Reed, operator of the Black Doves, and Ben Whishaw play Jason, who is sent to protect Helen.
(Netflix)
At the same time, “Black Doves” is often funny, which makes even some of the “worst” characters good company. Rat Scabies, drummer for the pioneering punk band the Damned, has a nice cameo as the proprietor of a music store that also deals in guns. But the designated clowns are partnered assassins Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy) and Williams (Ella Lily Hyland), working for Lenny (Kathryn Hunter), who manages a stable of killers. She’s drawn and dark, where Mrs. Reed is blonde and rosy-cheeked; where Mrs. Reed is soft and maternal — she insists on the “Mrs.” — Lenny is hard and practical. (Women run the show in this series; Tracey Ullman comes along in a late episode as another person in power.)
Eleanor: Why don’t we just firebomb his place? I’ve got a rocket launcher.
Williams: Since when have you had a rocket launcher?
Eleanor: Since last Christmas.
Characters do not always act in a way one would think reasonable — love is usually why — but the whole series is a sort of fairy tale, abstracted from reality. (The only Black Doves we ever see are Helen and Mrs. Reed, like a handful of soldiers standing for an army in a Shakespeare play.) The mysteries can be hard to track across six episodes full of people and things that seem other than they are. (“I’m not who you think I am,” Helen tells Jason, who is not what she thinks he is.) Players are forced to switch sides or join forces, so it isn’t always easy to remember who is working for whom. When someone mentioned a character named Elmore Fitch (Paapa Essiedu), sometime after his appearance, it took me a minute to remember who he was and why, or even if, he was important.
Notwithstanding 30 seconds on the Spanish Steps to place Sam in Rome, and the China angle, it is, as spy stories go, decidedly local. There is no terrorist threat, no clock ticking until a bomb destroys half of London. No jumping from airplanes or riding motorcycles up the steps of the National Gallery. There are no elaborate lairs where the spies do their business; characters just meet in restaurants or cars. Fundamentally, it’s a detective show, with the protagonists trying to work out who killed whom and why, while various parties fight for control of a black box — as in a crazier, bloodier, more emotional version of “The Maltese Falcon.” It’s as good as that sounds.
