Black Doves Season 1 Review – Fails to soar high despite initial promise

Season 1

Episode Guide

Episode 1 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 2 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 3 -| Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 4 -| Review Score – 4/5
Episode 5 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 6 -| Review Score – 3/5

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how best to describe Black Doves since binging this when it dropped on Netflix. Perhaps the best analogy here is with a blender. Imagine the scene – you’ve cut all your ingredients, you’ve got your recipe book open and you’re ready to go. You drop all the ingredients in the blender, hit the power button… and chaos ensues.

Having forgotten to put the lid on, the kitchen has turned to a chaotic mess of epic proportions. Your beautiful cream walls are now painted in an ugly shade of red like some slasher movie from the 80’s, and while there is some salvage left inside the blender, the rest is completely unusable.

Black Doves is, in essence, the embodiment of what I’ve just referred to as the “blender disaster”. A show with decent elements and promise on paper, but blended together into an unworkable mess. It’s an enjoyable, sometimes tasty mess, but still a mess all the same.

Black Doves is a show that can’t quite work out what sort of tone it wants to stick with, nor where the focus should lie. There are, in essence, four main story threads here, all working against one another, along with both a serious and irreverent tone which works at odds with Marvel-esque humour and slapstick gags. It really is a tonal whiplash at times, and it’s only when the dust settles that you’ll actually find yourself wondering what went wrong with this one.

I will preface this quickly though to say that Black Doves, in the moment, is an enjoyable and serviceable spy thriller. It has moments that definitely work and some of the humour is genuinely funny, leaning into the British wit that makes other shows of its kind so endearing. However, it’s only when you stop to think about this one that the trouble begins.

The story centers on “Black Dove”, Helen Webb. She’s an undercover agent working for a top-secret group intent on finding information from different targets and selling them to the highest bidder. Her current, and long-term goal, is to feed back information gained from MP Wallace Webb and the British Government. Helen and Wallace have been married for 10 years, and as we find out later on in the series, Helen’s face has been plastered up on the news and she’s very much a public figure.

Helen however, has not been completely forthright with her husband. Along with being a spy, she’s also involved in an elicit affair with a man called Jason. They’ve been seeing each other on the side for 3 months and Helen is convinced it’s love.

When Jason, and several other contacts he’s been in touch with, are brutally assassinated, Helen finds herself unwittingly thrown into a massive conspiracy, which goes all the way up the chain of command back to the Prime Minister and international relations.

While Helen works with her handler at the Black Doves, Mrs Reed, there’s a separate story following her husband Wallace as he tries to de-escalate a growing international conflict. Along with Jason and the others being killed, the Chinese Ambassador has died from a drug overdose. However, the Chinese call foul play and link this back to the US, who appear to have a hand in stirring up trouble.

As everything teeters on the potential for World War III, another story thread comes in the form of a triggerman called Sam. Sam is basically a hired assassin and has been working for a woman called Lenny. However, something has gone wrong in his past and as a result, he’s got a big bullseye on his back. Oh, and he’s also friends with Helen too.

Late on, all of this then collides into another narrative involving a crime family. I’m being careful here not to spoil anything but while the desire from the writers is clearly to try and one-up everything and go bigger and badder every time, it also causes the show to fall apart from the seams.

The first three plots aren’t too bad, albeit somewhat messily edited together, but the characters don’t do this one many favours. The motivations can sometimes be a little confusing, especially with players like Mrs Reed. Early on, we find out that the Black Doves aren’t too enthused with violence. They won’t take Sam on because he’s involved with Lenny and murders. Reed tells him that the Doves are simply here to gain information and get out. But then, this is thrown out the window when Reed enlists a new agent with the goal being violence and bloodshed. It’s such a bizarre way of framing a character that seems so vehemently against violence. I understand the whole “desperate times call for desperate measures,” but it also makes her a messy and poorly fleshed out player here.

Meanwhile, Helen’s character has an uphill battle from the start. Trying to root for someone that’s immediately embroiled in infidelity ad believes she’s found love after a 3 month affair, while also having two young kids at home and a worried husband, isn’t a great start. Then there’s the situation involving the fact she’s a public face while also trying to sneak around as an assassin and working undercover. We’ve seen her on TV monitors and being an MP’s wife, she easily skirts around London, including the US Embassy too I may add, without a single person recognizing her.

Sam is a much stronger character by comparison, and there’s an episode that dives entirely into his backstory, along with extra context around how Helen got into this game too. It’s arguably the best episode of the bunch and I kinda wish the show had gone a more conventional route of showing the history first and then diving into the modern-day drama. That way, we could have had enough time to warm to these poeple.

In fact, a lot of the problems with this show really crop up late on in the game and undo some of the promising headway made in the first half. There’s an inclusion of two assassins by the name of Williams and Eleanor that add absolutely nothing to the story. And somehow, we also get some backstory for these two which is honestly the most boring plotline in the whole show. Basically, Williams runs to the canal and asks for Eleanor’s help. She says yes and away they go.

The pair also immediately throw jokes into everything, tying to channel that Villanelle energy from Killing Eve but coming across as embarrassing and cringy instead. There’s a scene here that feels completely out of place, as the pair start discussing Christmas movies while caught in what should be a difficult and tense situation. It not only undermines the stakes of the entire scene, it’s also amusingly ironic that nobody mentions Love Actually, given Keira Knightley is obviously in that movie.

Speaking of Christmas, Black Doves is absolutely relentless in showing that this is a series designed to be watched around Christmas time. There are Christmas tunes thrown in every episode, Christmas lights everywhere and dialogue that references Christmas. Oh, and there’s even a scene of a nativity too. I get that this is set during the holiday season but sometimes it feels a bit overboard.

The best example of this comes midway through the show. When you have the threat of World War III hanging over this world, while also knowing the characters have their family and friends’ lives hanging in the balance, rocking up at a warehouse wearing tinsel and shooting the place up to the sound of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ is an absolutely bizarre clash of tones that really doesn’t work.

I’ve briefly mentioned it earlier but the tone (along with the unnecessarily convoluted plot) is where this one really slips up. There are slow and somber scenes mixed in with Marvel-esque humour and quips, and this is never balanced particularly well. In fact, the first few episodes give the illusion that this one is going to stay on the straight and narrow, and really revel in the gritty feel of espionage spy thrillers. Only, we then get the rug pulled right up from under us, as the show tries to chuck in humour and gags.

There’s also a constant motif in the sound design too, usually for establishing shots over the cityscape, that use a very distinct two or three piano note riff. I’m not saying it’s identical, but for those who have watched Slow Horses, you’ll definitely get a feel of Deja vu here. Although this show is nowhere near that level.

In fact, compared to any other show in this field, Black Doves feels like a flightless bird that’s struggling to soar. It’s nowhere near as comedic and gripping as Slow Horses, nor does it have the tense action sequences like Day of the Jackal. It’s not as absorbing as The Agency and it’s certainly not as well-balanced as Killing Eve. At least, the first few series anyway, not the dreadful final season. 

Ultimately though, Black Doves can’t decide what sort of show it wants to be or how to mesh its individual components together into a cohesive whole. This isn’t a bad show but it’s not a particularly great one either, leaving a series of untapped potential and mediocrity.

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