Black Doves (2024) – Pulp Trashy Fun

Genre – Spy (Crime?) Action

Time: 6 x 55 minutes episodes

Platform: Netflix

Cast: Keira Knightly. Ben Whishaw. Sarah Lancashire. Andrew Buchan.

You don’t like serious stuff. You want your entertainment clean and without any great philosophy about the nature of spies and spying. In short you want gunfights, explosions and witty dialogues. In other words – Bond! What?  No more Bond since he (finally) died ? A clone will do?

Something sassy, stupid, witty, gory, and most of all pulp masala? How do you create said masala?

1. Take one female spy Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), who is happily married for ten years to the British Defense Secretary Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan). Mix in her boss Reed (Sarah Lancashire) who reminds her of her duty as a ‘Black Dove’ – to steal Wallace’s secrets and hand them over to Reed.

2. Throw in a gay gunman Sam (Ben Whishaw) brought back from semi-retirement from somewhere in Europe and who saves Helen just in time from two female assassins dressed as policewomen. How did he land up at the right place at the right time? Oh. Reed told him to protect her. What was Helen doing ? Checking the home of her secret male lover  (cue for some romantic dialogues of the I love you and dont want to keep any secrets from you; I am not who you think  I am ) for some clues as to why he was murdered.

3. Garnish it with the said gay gunman Sam mooning over his black lover Michael (Omari Douglas) with Bollywood style phrases such as he thinks of Michael’s eyes whenever he closes his own eyes. Their affair happened ten years ago when Helen had just married Wallace and saved Sam and Michael from being ground into body parts by a criminal gang, while she was heavily pregnant.

4. Add some more gunmen. Oh – this time its two lesbian gunwomen who are also out to get Sam unless all of them kill a crime Lord. Or kill each other.

5. Hanging in the background is the mysterious death of the Chinese Ambassador to the UK, which creates its own mix of the Chinese threatening war with both the UK and the US. His daughter who is a party fiend is missing and is hunted by the CIA, the Black Doves, rival criminal gangs, the London police and of course Helen and Sam, who are threatened time and again to produce a recording which they DON’T have.

7. Did we say that it all started with three killings on the same day and the fourth one being the Chinese ambassador’s supposedly accidental death by heroin overdose?

9. Keep the entire mixture on high flame for a high body count and all happening just before Christmas time when there are large crows out shopping but still there are high speed chases on foot and cars.

The TV series is at times silly but yet has high energy with enough car chases, deaths and explosions, and Bollywood style “I can’t live without you” dialogues uttered by the gay men to make you laugh and cry at the same time. The gay romance is where the Bollywood style dialogues come in (I remember your eyes; How can I forget you? Not a day goes by without me thinking of you) reminding us of several 1960s romances; the only thing missing was a flashback song 🙂 . There are flashes of some misplaced humor; “This car is filled with three contract killers who are suddenly on a morality trip? Get real”.

It’s fun in places and boring at times and witty at places and Bondian at times, all garnished with a Tarantino like blood spattering. Helen Webb is splattered with blood and body parts at least thrice and she reaches home and no one is any wiser – don’t ask me how !  All done at a good and at times frenetic pace.

Don’t look for any great messages or even logic; this is just a “keep your brains outside” type of entertainment without the “MI style” seriousness.

And just what are the Black Doves? They are an organisation that sell intelligence to the highest bidder. Reed is the main controller. Helen is one employee and her husband, the British Defense secretary, is a target.Yes – she has a secret lover who is one of the three killed.

Keira is in good form. So are Whishaw and Lancashire. Check it out . It’s totally pulp.

Script – 4 out of 5

Story – 3 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

Total – 3.8 out of 5