21/38
Helen begins a passionate affair with a man who has no idea of her secret identity. When her lover falls victim to London’s dangerous underworld, Helen finds herself in the crosshairs and her employer asks Sam to protect her. Bingo, the owner of the guitar shop where Sam gets his weapons from, is played by Rat Scabies, a member of the band The Damned. Appearing on The Graham Norton Show: Cher/Keira Knightley/Michael Fassbender/Josh Brolin/Jalen Ngonda (2024). Fairytale of New YorkWritten by Jem Finer, Shane MacGowanPerformed by The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl. STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Terrible’Helen Webb’ (Keira Knightley) lives with her husband Wallace (Andrew Buchan), the Secretary of State for Defense, and their two children. All seems idyllic until her former Commander Reed (Sarah Lancashire) re-enters her life and informs her that her secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) has been killed along with two other people, prompting her to revisit her former life as a secret agent on a quest for revenge. Reed reunites her with Sam (Ben Whishaw), a contract killer and her former trainer, and together they navigate a complex web of political espionage and murder. The spy thriller has waded in popularity over the years, but still has the potential to work in new and different formats. Coming out of nowhere, with a massive advertising campaign, Black Doves is the latest major chart-topping Netflix production to try and revive the genre in modern times. The result is a truly mixed bag that holds your attention through its pleasantly concise eight episodes, but can’t really cover up the bumps in the script. Overall, it’s a fairly standard spy story with some fairly standard cliches about espionage and rapiers that anyone familiar with spy adventures of yore will recognize and even happily embrace. The big problem is the uneven tone. The script veers unevenly between wry, tongue-in-cheek action comedy and dark, heavy spy thriller that leaves you too confused to really understand. It makes up for this, however, with some stylish, eye-catching action sequences, with Whishaw and Knightley creating a convincing pair of unlikely pros, with strong support from Lancashire as the ice-cold, aloof M-type commander. The spy thriller remains one with limitless possibilities, and Black Doves, despite its flaws, is a strong addition to this standard work, with an interesting mystery at its core, some strong performances and action to match. ***