The Christmas TV films, which fall in big flakes on the schedules of French channels and on streaming platforms, make your heart retch with their avalanche of good feelings and their scenarios on autopilot? Netflix offers a sort of antidote with Black Doves by Joe Barton, which has not left the top 10 of the most viewed series since it was put online on December 5.
In a London enhanced by its festive lighting, the protagonists prepare their pudding with their family, make their Christmas decorations and attend the children’s end-of-year show… between two exfiltration or execution missions. In other words, it smells like a tree literally and figuratively and the six episodes can be stored away, like the cult film Die Hardin the category of deviant Christmas fiction.
L’anti- « Love Actually »
Keira Knightley plays the main heroine, Helen Webb, wife of the British Minister of Defense (played by Andrew Buchan, seen in Broadchurch), who we soon discover is actually an undercover spy, employed by the mysterious organization Black Doves (“black doves”). Her life is shaken when her lover, Jason Tobin (Andrew Koji), is murdered in the street after making a panicked call to two people with whom he had obtained compromising images. In shock, Helen postpones the work of mourning by seeking to discover why, and by whom, he was killed.
It is delicious to see the actress Love Actuallythe quintessential Christmas film, shake up these memories by putting yourself out there in settings – and sometimes scenes – reminiscent of Richard Curtis’ romantic comedy. The action sequences sometimes appear without warning and at times recall another success of the British spy series, Killing Eve.
If it emphasizes cruelty much less (although) than the latter, Black Doves also has in common with her a quirky sense of humor and the fact that women are in charge. Spies or sponsors, they are the ones who carry out the action.
A man among women
Sam Young, played by Ben Whishaw, is the only exception. This hitman returns to London after seven years of exile to ensure Helen’s protection. A return home – like in a Christmas TV movie – which also involves him confronting his past and in particular Michael, the man he left in complicated circumstances.
The British magazine Radio Times rightly welcomes the fact that the series takes the “gay best friend” trope on its head. In other words, the scriptwriting cliché consisting of using a so-called “homosexual friend” character, stereotypical, “to generate easy laughs and better highlight heterosexual women whose stories matter more”.
Black Doves traces the ten-year friendship between Helen and Sam and sheds light on their respective psychologies. The bond that unites them is one of the dramatic issues of the scenario which also deals with families of the heart and the relationships formed between individuals to provide each other with support while fighting against adversity. We come back to Christmas fiction, which so likes to emphasize reunions between loved ones. Except that in Black Dovesit is told without sentimentality but with much, much, much more blood.