A British thriller where Keira Knightley plays a covert spy and Ben Whishaw plays an assassin (triggerman is what they call it in the show, and it’s not gender-specific, by the way) is something that has very little chance to go wrong. So, I wasn’t surprised to find myself hooked to Black Doves during its opening five minutes or so, even before its lead stars appeared on screen. That said, I didn’t expect a show that’s filled with blood and gunfights to be this delightful overall and end on a genuinely wholesome note, fit to give any Richard Curtis movie a run for its money. We’re obviously going to talk about what happened in Black Doves season 1, the ending of it, and whether or not there’s a possibility of another season coming. Let us get into it.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the series?
On a cold December night in London, three people—Maggie, Phillip, and Jason—seem to be really paranoid about something big while on a conference call. Jason is particularly concerned as he thinks he’s being followed by someone, as we see him telling Maggie. That’s all he can tell her before we see Maggie’s dead body, and at the very same moment, Phillip gets strangled to death by someone. Realizing his end is near, Jason calls someone named ‘Soft Play’ and records a voice message where he apologizes for calling and tries to add something to it but is silenced (literally with a silenced gun) before that. Meanwhile in Rome, Sam (Whishaw) receives a phone call from his former employer, Mrs. Reed (Sarah Lancashire from BBC’s “Happy Valley,” who’s excellent here), asking him to return to London. Upon returning, he picks up a random man at a bar, and the two go to a hotel room. But Sam’s night of pleasure is cut short when Mrs. Reed calls again and requests him to get into action immediately thanks to an emergency.
The reason Sam is called upon happens to do with Helen Webb (Knightley), a mother of twins—Jacqueline and Olie—who’s married to the British Secretary of Defense, Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan, whom I’ve admired ever since “Broadchurch”). That’s just how the world, including her family, knows her. In reality, Helen is this super spy who’s working for this organization called Black Doves. But that’s not all. She had an affair with Jason, who was a civil servant. Thanks to what happened to Jason, Mrs. Reed believes that whoever killed the guy is now after Helen. Given how deep Helen is into the covert mission (by which I mean her whole life—husband, kids, playing the perfect wife), Mrs. Reed has no choice but to protect her. What further pisses off the Black Doves boss is Helen claiming to be genuinely in love with Jason. It doesn’t take long for us to realize that she is, in fact, telling the truth. She may be a spy whose entire life revolved around the job, but her feelings for the dead man were as real as they could be. Naturally it is not a surprise that Helen started looking into Jason’s murder and went to his flat, neither is it one when she gets ambushed by two triggermen—Kent and Williams. Fortunately, Sam is here to save Helen, and he just does that by shooting Kent in the head (which he regrets later), while Williams flees the scene. Turns out, Sam and Helen go way back, to a time when she used to be known as Daisy. All she was looking for was a basic job of an interpreter, but obviously she was made for much bigger (and scarier) things and turned out to be a perfect fit for Black Doves. We do see the origin story, where Helen/Daisy asks Reed whether she would betray her country, and the boss responds that sometimes she might end up helping Britain. Sam was brought in to train Helen, and they pretty much became BFFs. She met Sam during her first assignment, which was Wallace. While her job was to get some files off his laptop, she decided to stay on, and you can figure out the rest.
Meanwhile, the deaths of Jason, Maggie, and Phillip are not the only crimes that have shaken London in the wake of Christmas. There’s a crime of much larger scale—the mysterious death of Chinese ambassador Chen, which has put Britain in quite a difficult political fix with China. The Chinese have refused to accept the coroner’s report that claims the cause of death was a heart attack. They believe the Americans had something to do with it. As the defense secretary, Wallace is under a lot of pressure regarding this. The ambassador’s daughter, Kai-Ming Chen, has also gone missing. When Helen discovers (thanks to the hard drive she found in Jason’s flat) that the number Jason repeatedly called on the day he died belongs to none other than Kai-Ming, it becomes quite evident that everything in this story is somehow connected.
Sam has a job to do
Quite often, in a series like this one, a subplot proves to be some sort of a hindrance. But here, not only is Sam’s arc as strong as that of Helen’s; it eventually blends with the main plot so well. Sam may have come back to London to help Black Doves with Helen, but his return has also brought attention to his other former employer, Lenny. He used to be the triggerman for her — and the job involved taking care of people who were involved in bad things. He was great at it, but then had to leave London after messing up one operation where he couldn’t pull the trigger. In his defense, it was only a kid, Hector Newman. Sam’s assignment was to kill the Newman brothers, who were all part of a mob family. He did just that, except he didn’t know the youngest Newman was a little boy. Sam couldn’t kill him thanks to his moral code (that says a child is off limits), but that proved to be quite fatal for him, as that little boy came back with the Newman goons and stormed Sam’s house. He was in a relationship with this artist, Michael, who obviously had no idea about Sam’s job (he believed he was in insurance). It was a shock of a lifetime for Michael to see a violent gunfight of that sort, and more importantly, seeing Sam for who he really was for the first time. Sam did save Michael, though, by shielding him and getting out of the house while killing as many Newman goons as possible. He also had to call a very pregnant Helen, who had to come and shoot one of the men and then take Michael away. That was the last time Sam saw Michael, who now has a four-year-old daughter (although there’s no partner or spouse on the scene). Helen was also on the verge of getting out, as the whole undercover spy thing was getting too real for her, with the pregnancy and everything. But she couldn’t because of Sam, as she had to take Mrs. Reed’s assistance to save him, and that didn’t come free.
Back to the present, Lenny pays a visit to Sam—along with Williams (yes, the same one who tried to kill Helen in Sam’s flat) and her new partner, Eleanor (because Sam killed the old one, Kent, remember?)—to remind him that he still has that old job to finish. And if he can’t kill Hector Newman, who has now made something of himself in the London underworld, the triggerman duo of Williams and Eleanor are going after Michael and his daughter. So Sam has no choice but to comply and take this extra load. That actually proves to be helpful, as when he reaches the warehouse Hector is supposed to be in, he finds out one very important thing: Kai-Ming Chen was there. She was being held by Hector and his men until they had to leave because of an attack. It is all but certain that whoever killed Jason, Maggie, Phillip, and the ambassador is behind the attack, and it is more likely to be an organization than a person.
Helen is not to be messed with
Thanks to Sam finding a bullet casing at the location where Jason died, it doesn’t take long to identify the person who shot Jason—one Elmore Fitch. When Helen and Sam reach Fitch’s place, they realize the man has set a trap for them and save themselves in the nick of time before getting blasted away. Fitch soon pays a visit to Helen’s home, that too in the middle of the night, which clearly turned out to be a big mistake on his part, because Helen is not someone to mess with. Especially if her home and kids are threatened, she goes completely wild. Fitch was only doing his job, though, as he admits to her before she kills him. Like Sam, he was also a triggerman, just a slightly less lucky one.
Thanks to her bugging her husband’s phone (which is child’s play for her), Helen finds out about the possible involvement of Police Commissioner Stephen Yarrick in the whole assassination of the ambassador plot. It also helped that Jason had mentioned someone named SY (has to be the initials) in his chats with Phillip and Maggie (Helen has the backup; don’t forget). Apparently, Phillip was a journalist who came to Wallace regarding the police commissioner being involved in something shady. Right after that, he was killed, which made Wallace suspicious about his de facto best friend, Yarrick (their families do practically everything together). Wallace, being a righteous man, even asks Yarrick directly, but the commissioner dismisses Phillip as a hack of a journalist. He might fool the defense secretary but not Sam, who, upon Helen’s insistence, investigates Yarrick with a gun to his head (that too at a neighborly Christmas play). But Yarrick appears to be more afraid of the people with whom he’s in cahoots than Sam. He warns Sam that these people are too powerful to be dealt with, and death is a sure thing if anyone stands up to them. All Sam gets is a number saved on Yarrick’s phone as ‘Repair Shop’ (going to refer to it as RS for the time being). Helen promptly dials it, but instead of revealing their identity, RS (it’s just a man with a deep voice) coolly asks her to back away. To prove their point, RS sends Helen a shocking video of Yarrick getting tortured to death (this was bound to happen, though).
Sam, meanwhile, gets another chance at finishing his job with Hector when Lenny lets him know about this warehouse in Peckham where Hector and his buddies usually hole up. But given the amount of security at that place, Sam has to seek help from William and Eleanor. An unlikely partnership is formed, and Eleanor gets very keen on using a rocket launcher and destroying the warehouse along with Hector. But Sam has to talk her out of it, as that would mean no more Kai-Ming. So the trio goes full old-school with the job, i.e., shooting everyone on their way. They rescue Kai-Ming and take her to Eleanor’s flat. However, despite coming face to face again, Sam doesn’t kill Hector, though he doesn’t tell anyone.
Who is behind all the deaths?
This is where it becomes properly diabolical. The Chinese believe it is the Americans who are behind the ambassador’s death. They even have a name—Cole Atwood, who works for the CIA and also happens to be Kai-Ming’s boyfriend. Helen gets the information about Cole from Reed, who asks her to extract Cole from the American embassy. The job is to get the information from Cole in exchange for an amount of money that he has never seen. To get Cole out of the embassy, Helen goes on a dangerous mission where she has to infiltrate the place as a visitor (fortunately she has a friend there), then Sam has to distract that friend—Vanessa—with a fake phone call about security concerns, giving Helen the perfect opportunity to get to Cole’s floor and do the rest. It goes pretty much as per the plan, except Sam gets distracted after receiving a call from Michael, who’s willing to give him another chance, and Helen ends up dealing some unfortunate collateral damage. However, they do get Cole out, but the guy tells them that he didn’t kill the ambassador—it was the Clark family who are behind everything bad. The Clarks are a criminal family/organization who are on a mission to dominate the underworld (and the political world) and make every government their pawn. Even the British prime minister (played by Adeel Akhtar, who gives off unmistakable Rishi Sunak vibes) is in their pocket. This comes as a shock for Sam and Helen, but they have a more pressing matter to handle as they realize Mrs. Reed has double-crossed them, and her actual plan is to hand Cole over to the Chinese. But if there’s no Cole, they can’t find the Clarks. So now they have to save Cole from the Chinese (and Reed), get to Eleanor’s flat, where Williams, Eleanor, and Kai-Ming are under attack (from the Clarks, obviously), and get the ambassador’s daughter out. Kai-Ming is important, because their way in with the Clarks is the family black sheep and matriarch Alex Clark’s son – Trent, who happens to be in love with the ambassador’s daughter. Unfortunately for Trent, it is only one-sided.
By the time Sam, Helen, and Cole reach Eleanor’s flat, things have gone out of control. The Clarks had kidnapped Eleanor and Kai-Ming. Sam manages to get Williams out, but she has been shot. Unable to find any other secure location, Sam takes the whole party to Michael’s house, which is clearly not going to help rebuild his relationship. We do get some top-class British humor thanks to this, so nothing to complain about. Anyway, RS/the Clarks calls Helen and asks for a video recording—a small black pinhole camera, to be specific—and if she fails to deliver, everyone she cares about is going to die. The video recording reveals that Trent is the one who accidentally killed the ambassador, and then the Clarks had to cover it up. Yarrick is seen in the video, and it also implicates the prime minister.
The problem is, Helen doesn’t have it. But someone like Helen always figures out things, so she finally realizes where that little piece of tech might be. It is in the jewelry shop where Maggie used to work, and from where Jason had bought Helen her Christmas present. It bothers her so much that Jason and Maggie were partners, as told by Cole (although it eventually turns out to be partners like Sam and Helen or Williams and Eleanor). Anyway, upon reaching the shop, Helen gets her hands on what she was looking for in no time. But she has a small matter to deal with: Mrs. Reed has sent someone to eliminate Helen. And we have known who that is from the very beginning—Wallace’s flirtatious secretary, Danny. Of course she proves to be no challenge for someone as seasoned as Helen. While Helen is tied up in this, Sam finds himself in a difficult situation—going to the Clark house alone to kill Alex Clark and getting caught. Mrs. Reed is to blame for this as well, as she is the one who convinced Sam to take on this assignment. It ultimately comes down to Helen and Williams (who is now doing a little better) to grab Trent and go to the Clarks for one final confrontation. Trent is very much willing to cooperate, though, as he is not like his mother or any other Clarks.
The exchange initially goes peacefully, but all hell breaks loose when Helen pulls out a gun (which she skillfully hid in Trent’s jacket) in Alex’s face. She is not going to let Alex Clark go after what she has done—killing Jason and threatening Helen’s family. But in a manner of low-key twist, it turns out that Alex is not responsible for Jason, Maggie, and Philip’s deaths. It was Trent who tried to cover everything up on his own and prove his worthiness to his mother. He is still not evil, but definitely a loser—who would supply drugs to a girl to impress her, then accidentally kill her father and then mess up trying to cover it? It surely doesn’t mean he’s going to go unpunished, and Sam takes care of that. It does have a lot to do with Sam failing to kill Hector and that coming back at him, I suppose. Not to mention, Alex Clark also dies, and so does her right-hand man (the man with that deep RS voice).
Will there be a second season?
Let us look into how neatly Black Doves ends before going into that. Sam gets a job offer from Hector, who now plans to fill up the vacancy left in the London underworld after Clark’s death. That prompts him to end things for good with Michael, which is quite heartbreaking. Helen and Mrs. Reed make up, and from her boss, Helen gets to know that Jason was an undercover MI5 agent whose job was to find a leak in the British government (it was the defense secretary’s wife, of course). But despite knowing about Helen, he submitted a report that exonerated her from anything. That is clearly an act of love. Black Doves brings the curtain down with everyone celebrating Christmas—Sam at Helen’s house, meeting Wallace for the first time (and telling him he’s in insurance); Eleanor, Williams, and Kai-Ming altogether; and Mrs. Reed looking out of the window alone with a glass of champagne in her hand (not that she would have it in any other way). A second season is not likely after an ending like that, which is filled with a lot of warmth and proper closure. However, I would very much like to see Sam and Helen again, as they’ve become my new favorite spies. I hope Netflix finds a way to do another season, maybe with Hector taking over the underworld and a new threat appearing. With Wallace now up for the prime minister position, things might just get interesting with a new set up. This is still a big bad world, where things can always go wrong—and warrants people like Sam and Helen getting into action.
Some Notes
- Wallace is a rare, huge green flag husband, and props to the writers for coming up with a character like that.
- Sam’s father being his first kill was a cool twist.
- Cole Atwood should have had more screen time, as actor Finn Bennett (who broke out with True Detective: Night County) is quite brilliant.
