Christmas comes early with the stylish spy thriller Black Doves

Why aren’t more thrillers—and specifically, conspiracy-fueled spy thrillers—set during Christmastime? That question springs to mind about three seconds into Black Doves, a stylish and entertaining new series from Giri/Haji’s Joe Barton, as the camera captures a drunken singalong of The Pogues’ “Fairytale Of New York” in a cozy pub, with frothy pints and red caps and decorations and all of that cheer—only for it to then head outside as the show coldly and quickly kills off three people we just met. The holiday is inescapable in Black Doves, basically blasted in the audience’s face in locales as disparate as a high-end Central London department store and a dilapidated, corpse-strewn drug den in Peckham that’s bathed in red and green lights and the reverberations of “Santa Baby.” The show, to be clear, is hardly the first thriller with this conceit—undercutting those seasonal reminders of goodwill towards men with bloody evidence of just how bad those men can be—but, at least in creator/writer Barton’s hands, that doesn’t make it any less effective, sturdy, or consistently amusing.  

Those titular Black Doves are a group of talented, long-game spies—the kind who don’t toil in service of any particular government or cause but rather, as their ringleader Reed (Sarah Lancashire) calmly puts it, her warm eyes belying a hardened, seen-it-all air, “the highest bidder.” For the past 10 years, Reed has been overseeing Helen (Keira Knightley), who is now married to a higher-up in the U.K.’s Conservative Party (Broadchurch’s Andrew Buchan) and has lovely twins and a lovelier house in a posh neighborhood. When Helen’s life is in danger, her old pal and fellow trainee Sam (Ben Whishaw, who is so good here that at points he seems like he’s flexing his dramatic muscles for a different show), a self-dubbed “triggerman,” returns to England’s capital to help her. And in the process, lots and lots of people are blown to bits, with the series shifting from domesticity to Kill Bill-esque hand-to-hand fights that are confidently constructed by directors Alex Gabassi and Lisa Gunning. 

And, to be sure, our shady heroes leap from explosions into the Thames, take out an entire neon-lit nightclub full of baddies, seem to know every down-low dealer in town (like a guitar-shop owner who peddles firearms played by The Damned’s Rat Scabies), and are unfazed by, say, an attacker’s brains suddenly splattering all over them. Soon enough, Helen and Sam are plunged deeper into a multinational conspiracy—one that involves a Chinese diplomat and his heroin-addict daughter, the CIA (including a new agent portrayed by True Detective: Night Country’s Finn Bennett), the Prime Minister, and a family of local criminals—and into further regret over the loves they lost because of this line of work. Near the end of the season’s six episodes, that push and pull between slo-mo flashbacks of former relationships and big-picture revelations about who’s behind all of this international chaos can get a bit wobbly and tonally messy. That said, try not to well up when a teary-eyed Whishaw delivers a monologue to an ex, showing a masterclass in restraint and naturalism in a show that isn’t really about either of those qualities. 

Which is to say: Black Doves, as front-loaded as it may be, is very well written, with Barton’s lines at points—and only when it calls for it—having a rhythm and musicality not unlike a hard-boiled paperback. He also has a keen ear for banter and love of absurd little details, like Sam having to do a hit while five glasses of wine deep and high on ketamine or a pair of young assassins (played by the Irish and Welsh actors Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy) arguing like sisters in search of a rocket launcher during a shootout or tied-up folks awaiting execution discussing their favorite Christmas movies. (On The Holiday: “That’s a shit film; that’s shit. You saw that with your boyfriend, yeah? That’s a really nice memory.”)  

If all of this—the humor, the bloodshed, the spy tricks, the A-tier casting, the London setting, the mysterious men in vans pulling outside a quiet flat to rack up dozens of bodies without any police presence—gives off  Slow Horses vibes, you’re not far off, although Black Doves feels more insular and big-hearted and not as tailor-made for a multi-season run. (It did, however, get renewed for a second batch back in August, and, to be fair, few shows are set up for the long haul like the books-based Horses.) It’s also kind of the ideal holiday binge, a caustic and fun antidote to the trillionth viewing of It’s A Wonderful Life. Speaking of the season, though, it does end with a sliver of hope, as our main duo smokes and drinks on a Christmas morning, The Pogues’ bittersweet masterpiece kicks in again, and a montage unfolds that, yes, might just make you feel all warm inside.     

Black Doves premieres December 5 on Netflix