Black Doves

I just finished watching Black Doves and want to see more. Black Doves currently has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes so it's obviously a hit with both critics and the audience. It stars Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sara Lancashire. All 3 and the rest of the cast were all terrific. I won't be surprised to see this show get nominated for multiple awards come award season. It has plenty of action, drama, comedy and twists and turns to entertain everyone. There are so many spy shows and some especially great ones this year so you have to be good enough to stick out of you want people to notice and Black Doves definitely does that. It's a must watch for any fan of spy series.

It's one of those common entertainments where you can't really criticise the acting and the production values are pretty much flawless. It starts off really well. You think you are about to be absorbed and seduced by a complex spy thriller. But John Le Carre it is not. Instead you soon realise that it's neither serious nor funny. As is so often the case these days it's the paucity of the story that is the problem. It has quirky characters and indeed characters with all the charm and conversational wit one expects of psychopaths. They could be related to Eve from Killing Eve but these are poor cousins and don't really add up well on the scale of DNA psychopath inheritance. It's a comic book caricature of a spy thriller with a storyline that relies on a thin plot and frequent action scenes to fill the spaces. Sadly disappointing, it could have been really good.

One of my chief, and constant, criticisms of so many films now, is the lack of solid and consistent scripts, AND marred by horrible musical tracks and pathetic sound mixing. So I start this by saying that it was a real pleasure to discover a whole SERIES with no glitches or distractions in sound. As for the script and plot, as one reviewer here put it: "Ok if you don't think too hard. Good acting. Lazy writing. Plot holes you can drive a truck through." I wold add- high marks for the humor built in and subtlety of some great lines such as: "Sorry" as the store-clerk is knocked out with drugs. Very fine acting and production throughout, but too many holes and dead spots to carry the overall. Would love to see a continuation with more talented scripting.

Black Doves ended up being a very solid spy thriller. I'm a big fan of this genre so went into this with high hopes even though I was skeptical of Keira Knightley playing a bad a$$ seeing she only weighs 100lbs soaking wet. I was wrong, she killed it. Same goes for Ben Whishaw, who also looks like he's 100lbs. Both of them were totally believable in their roles. I had a blast watching this and binged all 6 episodes over the weekend. I was addicted once I started watching it. I'm glad they plan on doing a second season because one is not enough. I want to see more of these characters and the world they built here.

I was set to jot down a few words about "Black Doves", the Netflix spy thriller starring Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw, and Sarah Lancashire, three actors I adore, when a conversation with a friend helped crystallize my thoughts (and subsequently cannibalize his). He described it as "fun and entertaining, but the emotional, realistic aspects of the story didn't work harmoniously with the unrealistic action," and that's a perfect summary. I may have enjoyed it a bit more than he did, but there's no denying the tonal discord. It probably would have played better back in December when it dropped, given its Christmas setting. That said, it was worth it by the end when comic goddess and legend, Tracey Ullman, appears as the villain, looking and sounding divine.