TV Pick of the Week: Black Doves - review by Yvette Huddleston

Set in a beautifully twinkly London in the run-up to Christmas, this pacy six-part spy thriller stars Keira Knightly as Helen Webb and Ben Whishaw as Sam Young who are both operatives for a secret espionage organisation known as the Black Doves. Led by the formidable Mrs Reed (Sarah Lancashire), the group will get hold of political, diplomatic or industrial secret information and deliver it to whoever pays the most. There is no morality here, it’s all about money and hard-nosed business.

The trouble is that both Helen and Sam have a bit of humanity about them which makes them vulnerable and is bound to lead them into trouble. Helen has been deep undercover for several years and is married to the UK Defence Secretary Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan) with whom she has two young children. For the past few months, she has been having an affair with a civil servant called Jason (Andrew Koji) and when he is murdered along with a tabloid journalist and a jewellery shop assistant, Reed makes contact with Helen to find out whether she, and their organisation, has been compromised.

The three murders, which all bear the signs of being professional hits, may or may not be connected with the death of the Chinese ambassador whose social influencer daughter Kai-Ming (Isabella Wei) has also gone missing. The Chinese are saying that they believe the Americans could be involved in the death of their ambassador and that the Metropolitan police have covered it up. So added into the mix is a against time to prevent a major international incident.

Meanwhile Sam, who has been living in Rome for seven years, is recalled by Reed to help out his old friend Helen. “I think you owe her one” says Reed mysteriously. We will later discover exactly what this means. The plot is expertly structured, the action scenes are fast and furious, the script is littered with great, dark-hued one-liners and there’s a lovely sparky chemistry between Knightley and Whishaw making the friendship between Helen and Sam authentic and believable. With thrills and spills galore, this is a classy treat.