Black Doves season 3 is not the headline; the series two review is. says the new run is wildly implausible, yet it still works because of the performances at its centre.
Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire do the heavy lifting. The review calls Whishaw magnetic as Sam, Lancashire spine-tingling as Reed, and Knightley perfect as Helen Webb.
Helen Webb in No 10
Helen is now newly installed in No 10 in series two, which pushes the show from espionage intrigue into more public power games. She also has to keep a man from MI5 from noticing major discrepancies in her backstory, so the character’s cover story is doing as much work as the plot.
Series one had already tied Helen’s investigation into the murder of the civil servant she was having an affair with to a plot involving the CIA and the Chinese ambassador. Series two moves that machinery forward by putting Sam out of a block of flats after a hit, then surrounding him with police.
Sam Riley at the station
A mysterious man played by Sam Riley then turns up at the station and offers Sam a way out if he agrees to carry out another set of cryptic murders. That is the kind of turn that makes the series feel less like tidy espionage and more like a pressure test for its cast, which is exactly where the review says it succeeds.
Helen, meanwhile, ropes in Sam, his associates and Laila in an effort to find Reed. The show leans hard on that mix of new danger and familiar faces, with Gabrielle Creevy, Ella Lily Hyland and Sam Riley feeding a story built around character chemistry rather than realism.
review
The useful reading for viewers is simple: if they want airtight plotting, this is not the pitch. If they want Knightley, Whishaw and Lancashire working at full tilt inside a rambunctiously entertaining espionage drama, series two gives them that in abundance.
For anyone waiting on Black Doves season 3, this review does not settle the question. It does, though, make the clearest case yet that the show’s future depends on whether that cast can keep selling a story that knows it is implausible and does not care.
