Netflix thinks that I'm going to "love!" the spy series Black Doves, and I'm too occupied with breakfast to scroll down, so let's have a look. It will be a reprieve from endless Christmas romcoms, anyhow.
Scene 1: No such luck. Santa Claus stumbles through a bar, singing "The guys of the NYPD Choir were singing 'Galway Bay'". Huh? Heavily intoxicated, he stumbles out into the street, and...um...out of the show.
A seedy looking guy (Andrew Koji) scopes out the bar -- The Coal House, a famous pub on the Strand in London -- and tries to call Maggie. She's out, so he calls a black-haired woman to complain that he's in trouble.
Left: Andrew Koji's butt
The black haried woman patches him through to Philip. (Thomas Coombes).
Seedy Looking Guy asks: "Did you talk to anyone?" Philip says no; then he's strangled to death. The black-haired woman is stabbed.
Seedy Looking Guy calls someone else and starts to tell them "I..." -- probably "love you," before he is shot. Way to kill off all of the introduced characters! Now who's the focus, Santa Claus?
Scene 2: Rome. A new seedy-looking guy sits at a bar, smoking. Mrs. Reed calls. He ignores her, but she keeps calling until he answers. He says "Ok, I understand." I don't.
Scene 3: Maybe London. An old lady with a dog...wait, not a focus character. A nuclear family Mom gets her sons and daughter ready for the Christmas pageant. There's a son and a daughter running up the stairs while squealing in delight and another son in the back yard, but when they appear again, there's only two. Big continuity error, guys, but they turn out to be just props to demonstrate her nuclear family-ness.
Then she goes into the study, where her husband (Andrew Buchan),the Minister of Defense, is negotiating with the Saudis and worried about the death of the Chinese ambassador. The coroner says it was a drug overdose, but you never know. I'm not sure what the Saudis have to do with it.
Scene 4: A swanky party. Mom greets some people, announces that this party is her light when things seem dark outside. Then an Elderly Woman pulls her aside and announces that Jason Davies, a Justice Department official whom she was having an affair with, was murdered.
She flashes back to kissing Jason and playing with his lips -- it's the Seedy Looking Guy from the first scene -- then assures the elderly woman that she wasn't working an angle. It was a real romance.
"Maggie Jones, who worked in a shop, and tabloid reporter Phillip Bray were also murdered." What about the black haired woman? She can't be Maggie, since Seedy Looking Guy told her "I can't reach Maggie."
Elderly Woman wants to know if he said anything during their last meeting that might have gotten him murdered, or if he was trying to find out Mom's true identity as a Black Dove.
Back story: Mom -- finally named Helen -- has been doing deep cover for ten years, courting and marrying the Minister of Defense and feeding them government secrets. She's in too deep to back out now, and besides, the Minister is on the road to Downing Street!
Elderly Woman tells her to keep quiet, don't call attention to herself, and especially don't investigate your boyfriend's murder.
Scene 5: The Elderly Woman approaches the Second Seedy-Looking Guy, now named Sam (Ben Whishaw)
He's retired; he hasn't had a hitman assignment for seven years; but the Elderly Woman insists: find out if someone is planning to murder Helen due to her association with Seedy-Looking Guy, and if so, kill them.
Later, Sam is drinking in a bar when a guy approaches him. They chat, and Sam invites him up to his hotel room. Say what?
Cut to Helen disobeying orders and going to the Seedy-Looking Guy's apartment. She snoops around, cuddles with his coat, destroys a bug, tries to open a secret panel....
Wait -- what about the guy Sam invited to his room?
Screwing after the break
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Meanwhile, Sam is getting screwed by his hookup. The phone rings, and he pushes away, leaving the poor guy hanging with his dick out.
Sam is gay!!!!
Let that sink in.
There were no canonical gay characters in action-adventure movies until 2015, and after they are relegated to "blink and you miss it" scenes, Loki's "I've done a little of both," or Deadpool's "I like to put the moves on straight men because they get so uncomfortable, but the love of my life is a woman."
Sam actually has sex with guys. Granted, his sex scene is 1/10th the length of Helen's, and there's no kissing, but still, the protagonist of an action-adventure series is gay!!!!!
Back to the story: Two fake cops show up at the apartment building and shoot the landlady. While Helen is fighting them, Sam bursts in and shoots one. The other escapes.
Scene 6: Sam and Helen have a reconciliation. He's sorry he disappeared, but he wanted to retire and leave the job, and she'll never be able to leave. If I didn't just see him getting screwed, I'd think they were ex-lovers.
Scene 7: Since he's back in action, he needs a proper gun, so he goes to a guitar shop run by Rat Scabies of the punk band The Damned, who also sells underground guns. This is Britain, where you can't buy assault rifles in every convenience store. Rat complains that it's a young man's game now, all 22-year olds running around with Uzis; where's the class?
Outside the store, Sam runs into one of his friends, Arnie (Adam Silver), a civilian unaware of his spy activities. Delighted that he's back in town, he invites Sam to dinner tonight with his husband Zack (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett). Sam consents, but don't invite Michael (Omari Douglas).
A gay guy with a life of his own, not just an accessory to the heterosexual lady? This is amazing.
Scene 6: Sam gets down to business, and investigates the building near where Seedy-Looking Guy was shot. He finds a shell casing.
Helen calls: she scoped out the guy's phone records, and finds that he called an unlisted number five times the day he died.
Also, before he died, Phillip (remember him?) texted him about someone named Sy, so maybe that was the recipient of the calls.
Sam notes that he's having dinner with friends tonight, and Helen advises him to not see Michael. "Of course not. Bad idea."
Scene 8: Sam drops the shell casing off with George, a woman who works the makeup counter, to be analyzed.
Next it's time for dinner, with the sexual double-entendres that one gets at a gay party: "I can't wait to try your coq au vin. Or your cock."
At dinner, the guys want to know why Sam ghosted them for seven years: "Things were falling apart. I had to get out."
Next question: "What happened between you and Michael?"
He flashes back to hugging and kissing Michael (Omari Douglas, below) in bed, but answers: "Oh, we were just too different."
Back story: He's with another guy now, and they have a daughter.
Later, as they snort cocaine, Arnie tells him that they were fudging before. Michael was with another guy, but he's single again. No, dude, you can't go home again. Don't try it.
While they are talking, the prints on the shell casing come in: they belong to Elmore Fitch (Paapa Essiedu. right)
Scene 9: Helen goes to a deserted theater to meet with the Elderly Woman, who criticizes her for trying to investigate Seedy Guy's murder: "Do nothing. Do not arouse attention."
Scene 10: The Minister of Justice (remember him?) and his staff are watching tv in horror. Remember that the Chinese ambassador died of a drug overdose? The Chinese authorities are rejecting the coroner's report: they think it was murder, and are blaming the British. This could mean war!
Back to Sam: they traced the number that Seedy-Looking Guy called five times on the day he was murdered: it was the Ambassador's daughter, Kai-Ming Chen, who has gone missing. See how nicely this all fits together?
Beefcake: Two gay sex scenes.
Heterosexism: The juxtaposition between Helen's "perfect" heterosexual nuclear family life and her underground career as a spy
Gay Characters: Sam, his friends, his ex-boyfriend, and probably some others.
The Black Doves: Helen is feeding government secrets to the enemies of Britain. Doesn't that automatically make her the bad guy?
My Grade: A.
See also: Revisiting Brideshead Revisited: Does the groundbreaking portrayal hold up after 40 years? With Ben Whishaw.
A Discovery of Witches: Some lesbians, a gay tease, a Very Important Book, and Matt Goode's goods
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