Apple TV’s “Slow Horses” has received consistent acclaim and annual nominations from the Television Academy, most of them deserved. Netflix has its own six-episode British spy series that deserves to be alongside the Gary Oldman hit on the medal platform: Joe Barton’s “Black Doves,” a thrilling balance of humor and espionage, and another show that blends the personal with the political in continuously captivating ways.
The second season drops today, and it’s just as good as the first, a study in the inherent trauma of spyhood, a profession that demands that relationships be as tenuous as the pull of a trigger. With some of the most breakneck plotting of any show on any network, “Black Doves” is a rare Netflix drama that justifies the binge model, pushing through twists and turns over six chapters that might even force you to put your phone down while you watch.
A sort of Brit riff on “The Americans,” “Black Doves” is about a woman named Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), the wife of the U.K. Secretary of State of Defence who also happens to be a Black Dove, a mercenary spy organization that gets the shit done that Slough House can only imagine. Having someone undercover in the Cabinet is important enough, but season two promises even more access as Helen’s husband Wallace (Andrew Buchan) is about to become Prime Minister. Helen’s handler Reed (Sarah Lancashire) comes to her with new information … and then promptly disappears. Uh oh.
Black Doves: Season 2. (L to R) Ambika Mod as Laila, Keira Knightley as Helen Webb in Black Doves: Season 2. Cr. Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix © 2026Meanwhile, Helen’s BFF Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) is hired for a job that goes very wrong, pinning him under the thumb of a mysterious figure played by Sam Riley, who tasks him with a series of assassinations for his and Helen’s freedom. A meeting between Webb and someone on the Russian side who could broker long-delayed peace looms so large on the horizon that it brings in an American representative played by Neve Campbell (kinda wasted but almost impressively just there for the ride) while the great Babou Ceesay of “Alien: Earth” slinks into the proceedings as Helen’s new handler with the Black Doves, and someone who may not be as understanding as Reed.
A brief early plot summary of season two of “Black Doves” barely scratches the surface of what it’s about, in part because some of the joy of the brilliant plotting is in twists and turns that won’t be spoiled, but also because this show moves at a speed that’s unusual in the streaming era. Many modern espionage shows linger in their Le Carré inspirations—“The Agency” being a good example—slow-burning through the day-to-day tension of being undercover. Not “Black Doves.” It constantly shifts and moves, closer to a Bond action movie in its telling of a story that began decades ago in one character’s early spy career.
The writers here know how to use their relatively large cast, amplifying the roles of Sam’s allies Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy), and introducing a new quirky assassin named Laila, played perfectly by Ambika Mod. It’s a big extended cast that never gets away from Barton and his team, giving each of the players essential parts to play in the unfolding chaos, and his team expertly ties its characters together not just narratively but thematically, giving all of them issues related to the classic spy fiction belief that caring is a weakness.
Black Doves: Season 2. Ben Whishaw as Sam in Black Doves: Season 2. Cr. Courtesy of Matthew Towers/Netflix © 2026It also smartly doesn’t rely purely on chaos, taking opportunities to ground its characters, often through their action. It helps to have a performer as consistently fantastic as Whishaw, who imbues Sam with growing melancholy this season, playing him like a man who’s accepted he’s tied to the train tracks of a profession that doesn’t let people walk away before they get run over by the train.
Sam’s moral code remains in place, but he’s starting to ask what good it’s done. He will protect Helen at all costs, but that commitment has led to the kind of personal tragedy and immoral decisions that make him the kind of melancholy alcoholic that only Whishaw could play. We’ve seen so many troubled spies in literature and film, but Whishaw makes Sam into one of the most memorable, a figure who is somehow equally haunted and driven.
Whishaw may be the award-worthy standout of “Black Doves,” but the cast has no weak link. Mod makes for a marvelous addition this year as the kind of live wire who will throw a dart at a jerk at the pub; Ceesay oozes as the kind of suit that probably can’t be trusted even while he insists he can; Hyland and Creevy get to have some real fun as a couple of assassins who may find love undercover. That word is essential to the success of “Black Doves”: so much of this show is “fun,” and it always remembers to be as witty in its dialogue as its plotting.
The end run of the plotting in season two of “Black Doves” requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than some of the best spy fiction, especially in a fifth episode that gets so surprisingly heavy on the gunfire that it offers flashes of Michael Bay. But it’s a minor complaint for a show that should be more major in the public sphere. When it ended with a series of scenes promising a third season that will go in a different direction, it’s rarely more exciting to see where a show goes next.
Whole season screened for review. Now on Netflix.
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