Reasons To Watch Black Doves, Ranked

You love a fun spy show that you can binge in a weekend.

Black Doves is a Netflix spy show set in England. The second season dropped earlier this month, two years after the first. I ripped through a rewatch and current watch over the course of a week and it was a delightful use of my time. It might be a delightful use of your time, too.

Let’s get into it…

TEN: Intrigue!

The plot of Black Doves, per Netflix, goes like this:

An undercover spy married to a politician leans on her longtime friend and hitman to help execute covert operations and maintain her delicate double life.

Which, yes, technically accurate. There’s more here, though. The spy is played by Keira Knightley. The hitman is played by Ben Whishaw, best known for being the voice of Paddington Bear. They have a lot of lovely conversations while attempting to untangle very knotty plots against the British government and/or the world. In the second season, Keira's husband becomes Prime Minister, which is very funny for reasons we’ll get to in Reason Number Eight.

It’s a witty and sometimes funny action series where a bunch of spies and assassins try to murder each other, sometimes while wearing fancy dresses and tuxedos as a gala takes place nearby. This is a great start.

NINE: I love a smartass assassin in an action scene

Boy howdy, are these fun. Sometimes the assassins will be taking fire from automatic weapons and hiding behind an overturned dresser and having a discussion about their personal lives. Or they’ll be on the phone with a babysitter. Or they’ll be talking about, like, Shrek. It’s the type of thing that could be too cutesy if it’s done wrong but makes a show a blast when it’s done right.

I feel like the British accents help. I can’t explain why. But they do.

EIGHT: My one small quibble actually makes it more fun

It is always a little annoying when someone takes the fun spy show and pokes holes in its logic, but I’m going to do it anyway. “A little annoying” is kind of my whole brand. I’m okay with it. Follow me here…

The Prime Minister’s wife looks like Keira Knightley
She spends most of the series outside the house getting in gunfights while wearing a disguise that consists almost entirely of a pair of sunglasses
She is never recognized by the public
She never has to shake her security
She is never followed by the notoriously rabid British paparazzi

I kept waiting for some scumbag tabloid reporter to realize the new Prime Minister’s smoking hot wife keeps stepping out alone and get himself mixed up in an international terror plot. Maybe in season three. I’m picturing a scraggly neckbeard and a trenchcoat.

SEVEN: Get this man a marmalade sandwich

Ben Whishaw’s character, Sam, is a champagne-slugging assassin who spends most of the show murdering people and engaging in pillow talk with the men he sleeps with. While the voice here is slightly different than the voice he does as Paddington, there are certain words and phrases where it’s close enough that you can hear it if you’re listening for it. And once you start hearing, you’ll never stop.

What I'm saying here is that, if you watch Black Doves, you may have to rewind a scene every now and then because your mind drifted off and started thinking about a champagne-drunk Paddington Bear screwing in a silencer as he prepares to storm a warehouse. It’s an okay problem to have.

SIX: You're not made of time

Two things that are true:

I would love more shows that run for 20 episodes over the course of a season and come back every year
If you are going to take two years off between seasons like this show did, fine, six episodes is perfect because then I can rip off a little rewatch binge

We can have both. It’s fine.

FIVE: Good for Keira Knightley, honestly

Keira Knightley is a surprisingly great action star. She’s done it before, so the “surprise” part of this is probably on me, but still. She has a name and face that make it seem like she should star exclusively in projects based on Jane Austen books, and yet, there she is, engaged in gunfights and diving under tables all over present-day London.

I suppose this is just what acting is, now that I think about it. I don’t know. I guess my point is that Keira Knightley seems like a cool lady.

FOUR: A fun little thought exercise...

If you watch this show after watching a season of Slow Horses, as I did, you may also have to rewind a couple times because your mind drifted off to think about a crossover episode where noted bumbling tryhard River Cartwright ends up crossing paths with lesbian assassins who sometimes heave grenades into elevators, or one where Jackson Lamb farts his way through a lunch with snobby Mrs. Reed.

I did a lot of rewinding. My elementary school teachers said I had an active imagination. Joke’s on them – it’s my job now.

THREE: lol hi Neve

Neve Campbell shows up in season two as a White House staffer and spends most of the time marching through British hallways and shouting about how angry the president is. It’s kind of weird. You keep expecting her to do more. And then she’s just shouting again. It’s actually kind of fun.

TWO: My beloved murder lesbians

These two idiots, Williams and Eleanor, are assassins for hire that often team up with the main characters on missions. They are, by far and away, my favorite characters on the show, and maybe two of my favorite characters on any show from this year. They bicker and chit-chat and flirt — one character in season two refers to them as “murder lesbians,” which would be a great name for… anything, really — as they sow chaos all over London with firearms and explosives. If anything ever happens to either of them, I will be inconsolable.

Part of me wants a whole spinoff about them. Another part of me thinks that would be too much of a good thing. I can talk myself into and out of this all day if you let me. Let’s stop here for both of our sakes.

ONE: I mean, come on, you love a spy show

Don't lie to me. I know you do.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— good blog by Sepinwall about Cupertino, a show I’ll probably write about soon myself

— really well-done profile of Tommy Lee Jones — WATCH THE LOWDOWN YOU IDIOTS — that also features video of him playing with dogs

— Bobby Moynihan is absolutely killing it on Reggie Dinkins in very limited screentime, so I’m happy to see him getting some attention

— I appeared on the Extra Hot Great podcast this week to discuss Black Doves even more, but they also let me ramble for a while about my favorite television moment ever, and yes, I still have the GIF