Black Doves

Joe Barton's Black Doves premiered on Netflix on 5 December 2024, having been commissioned by the streamer from Noisy Bear and Sister — the production companies behind Giri/Haji and Normal People respectively. Barton had previously created Giri/Haji for BBC Two and Netflix, and Black Doves can be read as a lateral expansion of that project's interest in the emotional texture beneath genre mechanics, here applied to the tradition of the London spy thriller. A second series was greenlit before the first had aired.

Keira Knightley plays Helen Webb, a covert operative embedded in a political marriage, whose carefully maintained double life is disrupted when her clandestine relationship ends in murder. Ben Whishaw plays Sam, the former soldier assigned to protect her, and Sarah Lancashire — in a role sharply different from anything in her Happy Valley work — plays Reed, the organisation's cold-blooded handler. The series is set over a compressed period during a London political crisis, and directors Alex Gabassi and Lisa Gunning shoot the city in winter light that renders its institutional architecture both beautiful and threatening. The action sequences are staged with a physicality unusual for Netflix's British drama slate.

Critics responded warmly: 94% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, with particular praise for Knightley's performance — her first major television role — and Whishaw's supporting work, for which he won the Gotham TV Award. Knightley received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series. The series was credited with restoring the female-led spy thriller to mainstream British television.