"Black Doves" has all the delightful messiness of any true best friendship

It’s that time of year again, the time when we return to our hometowns, newly glowing with holiday lights wrapped around lamp posts and dotting rooftops, to admire just how much has changed and how much has stayed exactly the same. We may even schedule a coffee date with an old friend, the kind who you’ve come to know so well throughout life that you’re sure that you’ll pick up exactly where you left off, even if your communication has lessened somewhat as the years passed. One thing leads to another, coffee turns to a glass of champagne and a tumbler of whiskey, and suddenly you’re right back in the fold, spilling government secrets and carrying out murder-for-hire plots.

Well, maybe your nights out stop before all the trigger-pulling and espionage begin — I can’t say for sure. I don’t know you, after all. But I have become quite well-acquainted with Helen Webb and Sam Young, the two lead characters in Netflix’s frothy new spy series “Black Doves,” played by Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, respectively. As a pair of best friends who also happen to be lethal operatives in the show’s eponymous crime organization, Sam and Helen reunite in the days before Christmas, after almost a decade of estrangement, to investigate a murder with nuclear implications in which Helen has become entangled. 

There are plenty of unraveling mysteries and bloody shootouts along the way, but “Black Doves” is keen to keep the close relationship between its central characters at the forefront of the show’s six-episode first season. (Netflix renewed the series for a second installment shortly before the first landed on the streamer.) Amid the chaos of a growing body count and ticking clock, Helen and Sam prioritize their personal relationship with each other. They regularly find the time to come together for the sort of respite you can only achieve by gabbing and gossiping with someone who knows and genuinely sees you, and “Black Doves” is all the better for it. The show soars because of this deft, intriguing character writing that understands the importance of keeping your enemies close and your uncritical, platonic, just-as-damaged friends closer.

Sam and Helen come to that realization rather quickly themselves. Helen, deep undercover as the wife of prominent British politician Wallace (Andrew Buchan), has threatened the sanctity of both her cover and the Black Doves after the man she’s been having an affair with is murdered. Helen’s supervisor, Reed (Sarah Lancashire, sporting a delightfully suspicious gray bob) knows that Helen is too ingrained in her role to simply remove. So, instead of retiring her asset with a long-range sniper, Reed arranges for Helen’s old pal Sam, once their industry’s top “triggerman,” to return to London to assist her. 

Black Doves (Netflix)Sam, however, has plenty of problems of his own; one doesn’t just skip town after shooting their way to glory unless they’re running from something. But for Helen, he’s happy to make the time. Sam had been the one to look after Helen during her early days in the field, and he owes his one-time apprentice a great debt from years prior. But when the two reconvene, there is no talk of favors or captious admonishments, only the authentic joy of seeing a friend’s familiar face after so long. 

In no time, Sam and Helen are off to the races, clinking their glasses and stabbing their adversaries. The two characters pull one another into their mutual mess, but not a word is said about how they ended up there, at least at first; in the business of being solution-oriented, there’s no use in wagging fingers. Helen even goes so far as to support Sam in his wishy-washy appeal to his ex-boyfriend Michael (Omari Douglas), whom Sam deserted after a cryptic breakup years prior. That is, of course, entirely ill-advised. But being ride-or-die means that you have to support your companion wholeheartedly, no matter how many inane decisions they make along the way. You can spend all night talking your friend through a breakup, reminding them that they’re better off without the other person, until you’ve spoken yourself into a stupor on the couch. Yet, they’ll still be back together with their ex come sunrise. 

Whishaw and Knightley have the perfect chemistry to pull off this kind of familiar dynamic. Though both are esteemed actors in their own right, neither is too self-important to throw off the balance in front of the camera. Though Knightley has made a career as the go-to star of your everyday period piece, she’s just as enjoyable, if not more so, in a contemporary spy thriller. Whishaw is particularly delightful as he jumps between being a pouty-mouthed sycophant and a cold-blooded killer, armed with as much charm as his character has firepower. It’s always amusing to see Whishaw take on these kinds of parts after his voice role as marmalade-loving bear in the pitch-perfect “Paddington” films cemented his status as an international treasure. With both “Black Doves” and last year’s stylish queer drama “Passages,” Whishaw continues to prove himself a great, unpredictable asset in film and television. And besides that, we need more gay actors who aren’t afraid of doing their community a disservice by playing evil little gay men. For how many I’ve encountered through the years, I have yet to see their numbers matched in the media.

Black Doves (Netflix)That’s one of the best things about “Black Doves”: When you look past all of the ferocious violence and high-stakes surveillance, its narrative is still completely believable. There’s a recognizable kinship at its heart. On a base level, these two friends make mistakes and are there to help each other clean them up; Helen and Sam just happen to be spies, too. In that way, “Black Doves” feels almost like the fully realized product of childhood imagination, a television series dreamed up from secret agent games we played with friends in our naive youth, elevated to one of Netflix’s most outstanding shows this year. Sam and Helen can be as elegant and bound by moral codes as they can be juvenile and immature, and it’s that complexity that makes the show such a fun holiday season binge watch.

It helps, of course, that the show’s production designers were intent on filling as many frames as possible with colorful lights and ornate decorations to properly convey the feeling of Christmastime in London. Rarely are we allowed to forget that Dec. 25 is fast approaching. And while the series itself has the edge needed to fit snugly into the Christmas action movie subgenre, the omnipresent glow of lights supplies a Kubrick-ian, “Eyes Wide Shut” touch. The world’s seedy underbelly has emerged from beneath our noses. Now, we’re entrenched in it.

But who better to navigate the trials and tribulations of the holiday season than your best friend? Even if our problems aren’t as pressing or lethal as the ones Sam and Helen are staring down, “Black Doves” is a pleasant reminder that, through all the good and the bad, the holidays are a time to come together with the people we love to mend old wounds that require a friend’s touch. The series is briskly paced enough to watch with a close companion over a couple of nights or one long afternoon, letting the gray sky turn to black at 4 p.m., just in time for the raucous season finale. Even if you’ll be far from your best friends this Christmas, “Black Doves” is reason enough to pick up the phone and tell them that you’re thinking of them. And that you’re grateful for that time they helped you dispose of a body, if it’s applicable