'Black Doves' Is a Holiday Spy Thriller for the Whole Family

It’s a shame that Black Doves couldn’t fit into Netflix’s pre-Thanksgiving schedule because the six episodes of its first season are tailor-made for intergenerational holiday weekend viewing. Another entry in the venerable Bullets & Banter subgenre of espionage thrillers, Joe Barton’s (The Lazarus Project) latest series manages to meet, exceed, and subvert expectations with many twisty turns. It gives us six episodes full of Grand Guignol violence, tempered by unexpectedly tender moments and leavened by pitch-black, desert-dry humor.

Final-scene cliffhangers in each episode keep the momentum strong, eliciting the classic “Oh, why not, let’s watch another” response every streamer dreams of. All that would merit a solid recommendation as it is, but Black Doves is about 25% better than it needs to be and has already been renewed for Season 2, placing it above other quippy, espionage-focused political thrillers. Black Doves’s abundance of elements does not make an unholy mess of the series’s narrative coherence. Instead, Barton harmonizes and strengthens each part, starting with lead actors Keira Knightley(!), Ben Whishaw(!!), and Sarah Lancashire(!!!).

Each likely elicits a “Wow, I didn’t expect to see any of them in a spy thriller!” But what a pleasure to watch actors best known for playing historical/literary figures doing a series with close-up knife work, guns galore, and the frosty application of international relations. (Elizabeth Bennett fending off a hitman’s attempt to corner her at home! Paddington Bear doling out much more than the Hard Stare! Julia Child, taking a break from sublime soufflés to prevent international incidents from erupting into war and making a profane amount of money in the bargain!)