Black Doves (Netflix, from Dec 5th) sets out to answer a question nobody ever asked: what would happen if you were to remove Keanu Reeves from the John Wick franchise and parachute in Keira Knightley as his replacement? There’s an awful lot going on in Joe Barton’s pre-Christmas espionage romp – another surprise cameo from The Stunning’s Steve Wall, for one thing. But there’s no getting past the fact John Wick got there first with its global order of assassins operating in plain view – and Black Doves is doomed to come off like a copycat caper.
Keira is no Keanu, but she nonetheless holds her own as Helen – devoted wife to a prominent British politician (Andrew Buchan) by day, ace secret agent by night. Skulduggery isn’t the only thing she gets up to after dark. She’s also been having an affair with a well-connected civil servant, and when he is gunned down and his death connected to the disappearance of the daughter of China’s ambassador in London, her life gets very tricky, very quickly.
Enter Ben Whishaw’s Sam – a moochy assassin who has worked alongside Helen’s secret order of Black Doves super-spies and is recently returned to London after self-imposed exile in France. He took off years previously, having suffered a breakdown as a result of all his dark deeds but now he’s back and is drawn into the tangled web that has claimed Helen’s lover. This puts him once again on Helen’s radar and on that of her boss, Mrs Reed – Sarah Lancashire, occupying the enigmatic mentor role previously filled with such gusto by Ian McShane in John Wick. Lovejoy has been replaced by Raquel off Corrie – a decent swap and elevated by Lancashire’s nicely judged panto villain vibes.
Barton has a patchy record as a television auteur. He was behind the extraordinary Giri/Haji, a thriller about the Japanese Yakuza in London that concluded with a surprise outbreak of interpretive dance and which sold what could have a potentially silly misstep as a hugely emotive moment. However, he also created dire Sky time travel series The Lazarus Project, which made viewers wish they could travel backwards and watch something else instead.
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Black Doves tumbles between the two stools, though it benefits from a delightfully sweary performance from Knightley, who is excellent opposite the whispering Whishaw (seemingly recovering from voicing Paddington Bear in Paddington in Peru). “Are you pissed?” Knightley asks him in the middle of one of his reveries – only for it to turn out he has been snorting ketamine. She also looks appropriately annoyed when a man arrives in her kitchen on a mission to kill her entire family and does the proper thing by shivving him with a bread knife.
There is some tangential Irish interest. Carlow actor Ella Lily Hyland plays a rival assassin to Helen, hired to threaten Sam’s former boyfriend. Then, there is Steve Wall, who features in flashbacks as a significant figure in Sam’s life. It’s the most eye-opening guest turn by an Irish actor since Wall played an elite Sardaukar bodyguard of Emperor Padishah IV in Dune Part Two – or indeed since he materialised in a random episode of The Witcher and teamed up with Henry Cavill.
Wall has been brewing up a storm with his acting side gig for some time. You were almost disappointed he didn’t pop up in Wicked for a quick duet with Ariana Grande. His involvement isn’t enough to redeem the often average Black Doves – but what fun to watch him spread his wings as once and future kingpin of surprise cameos.
