"Black Doves": A very important seedy-looking guy, a deep cover spy, Santa Claus, and a gay hitman. With six bonus butts

 

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

Gangs of London: A gay assassin, his boyfriend, a gay mafia son, some sex parties, and a lot of violence and dicks

 

In dramas about crime families, the youngest son is traditionally gay -- think Deran in Animal Kingdom, Ian in Shameless, and Kelvin in The Righteous Gemstones.  So I'm reviewing the first episode of Gangs of London, on Netflix, to see if the traditionl continues.

Scene 1: An upside-down view of a cityscape.  Telling us that this is an alternate world?  No, it's a guy hanging upside down from a tall building, crying and begging Sean (Joe Cole, left) not to kill him.  But he says "What choice do I have?", douses him with gasoline and sets him on fire.  Soon the rope snaps, and the burning body falls. Kind of an overkill.

Scene 2: Irish Traveler Darren (Aled ap Stefan), who apparently works as a hit man, gets a new assignment -- "nobody, just some pedo," and invites his Buddy ( Darren Evans) along.  They park, and Darren goes up the stairs to an apartment, where he waits to shoot the guy.

Downstairs, the Buddy has trouble from a group of toughs.  Then Finn Wallace arrives!  The hit is on the head of the biggest, most important, most brutal crime family in London!  He tries to call Darren, tell him to cancel the job, he's not who they said,  but it's too late, Finn Wallace goes upstairs, and Darren shoots him.

Meanwhile, his Driver Jack ( Emmet J. Scanlan) is terrorizing the Buddy.  When he hears the shot, he runs to the car for his gun.  All the Buddy can think to do is run him over. 

Scene 3: While Darren soaks in a tub, being horrified, the family gathers for the funeral.  

We meet Family Advisor Alex (Paapa Essidue) and a little boy named Danny, who may grow up into a main character.  The costumes seem a little quaint, so I'm thinking that this is all a flashback

They watch the guests arriving, wondering if any of them ordered the hit.

Scene 4: Sons Billy and Sean (Brian Vernel, Joe Cole) play Dad's favorite song, "Suzy Q," so loud that everyone is disturbed.  

We saw Sean being brutal in Scene 1.  Billy is the gay one, and a recovering heroin addict, naturally.  

Left: Horror Hunks claims that this is Brian Vernel, but the one in Gangs of London is younger, with black hair

Family Advisor Alex advises them to not look for the killer, or they'd have a war on their hands.

More dicks after the break

Industry: 5 butts, 4 cocks, and 3 chests of the top money-makers at a banking CPS somethings in London

 

Industry is being pushed on MAX as the greatest television series of all time; it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes; and there's at least one gay character.  Should be an obvious must-watch, right?  

Maybe not.  I've tried getting into it twice, and get immensely bored after five minutes.  It's about money.  The inter-office squabbles of guys in suits making money by making money for other guys in suits, and trying to position into positions of higher power so they can make more money by making more money. 

 Shape without form, shade without colour, 

 Paralysed force, gesture without motion

It's not only boring, it's depressing.  You're in friggin' London. Go to the British Museum and see some art.  

Can we skip the money and just look at some naked guys?

1. David Jonsson, top photo, plays Gus Sackey, the main gay character. He majored in humanities before he sold his soul to Mammon.  Apparently he's closeted, not fitting in to the heterosexist money culture.  According to the Wikipedia, he's "assigned to the Investment Banking Division, IBD, and then the CPS desk.  I don't know what that is, either.

2. Will Tudor as Theo Tuck, the other gay character, an Eton graduate consigned to a lowly position as research analyst.

Guys, seriously, the British Museum has the Rosetta Stone.

3. Harry Lawley as Robert, from a working-class Welsh background, so he doesn't fit in with the upper-class Oxcam graduates working the money angle. There also might be some prejudice against the Welsh. He's on the CPS desk.

And it's open till 20:30 on Fridays

4. Ben Lloyd-Hughes as Greg, VP at the CPS desk.  Ok, I looked it up: CPS means Cross Product Sales, where you try to sell your bank customers things they don't need, like Wells Fargo:  "Oh, you want to open a checking account?  How about an auto loan and a credit card?"

How about the Victoria and Albert Museum?

5.Derek Riddell, here getting sexed up in The Book Club, as Clement, the CPS vice manager.

The St. Paul's Cathedral Choir is performing on Friday night.

More money-making cocks after the break

"Ripley": A slow, artistic version of the gay-subtext con artist/murderer, with Tom's bum and Dickie's dick

 

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) stars Matt Damon as the charming con-artist Tom Ripley, who has a gay-subtext romance with Jude Law's Dickie before murdering him and adopting his identity.  The 2024 version is a tv series, and reputedly overtly queer, taking the gay subtext into text.  I reviewed the first episode.

Scene 1: Rome, 1961, atmospheric black and white.  Having just killed someone, a man with his face obscured puts on his shoes and hat and starts dragging the body down a palatial staircase.  

Scene 2: Six months earlier, New York. Tom (Andrew Scott) gets up in his run-down room in a residential hotel, walks the mean streets, steals someone's mail, and writes out a fake "payment overdue" notice

Then he goes to a bar and starts one of those highly-closeted 1960s hookups with a guy named Al (Bokeem Woodbine) Whoops, no, Al is a private detective, hired to find him and hook him up with the wealthy Mr. Herbert Greenleaf.  Tom refuses, then leaves to ride the subway and walk the mean streets some more.  

Back home, someone left his business card: From the IRS!  

Scene 3: Tom continues his scam: he steals payment checks, then calls or writes the sender, claims that it was lost in the mail, and has them send a new check to his own post office box. Nice establishing shots of the art deco post office and bank.  

Uh-oh, the clerk thinks something is wrong, and goes to consult the manager. Tom has to run away, and close down the whole collection agency scam!  What to do next?  Maybe Herbert Greenleaf's job won't be so bad...

Scene 4: Greenleaf Shipbuilders.  Tom is escorted past the big ships to the office, where Herbert Greenleaf tells him about the job: his son Dickie,  Tom's old acquaintance, has been living in Italy for years, pretending to be a writer or a painter, but really just goofing off.  Greenleaf wants Tom to convince Dickie to come home.

Why Tom?  They didn't know each other well.  Because none of Dickie's other friends wanted the job. Why would someone on the bottom of Dickie's friends list, who he doesn't know well and doesn't care about, be able to talk him into leaving Italy?  Tom must have a really big dick.

Scene 5: While he's considering the job, Tom has dinner with the Greenleafs. Back story dump: He went to Princeton. When he was young, his parents drowned. Uh-oh, maybe he killed them. Then they look at some photos of Dickie when he was young, in college, and now, in Atrapi, with Marge -- "girlfriend, friend, who knows?"  So Dickie is gay.

Scene 6: Tom at the tailor's, inspecting the clothes the Greenleafs bought for him. He gets his passport, signs travelers' checks, throws out his scam checks, and we're on the Orient Express!  In the Swiss alps; I guess in those days you flew in through Paris?   

He writes to his Aunt Dottie, who is getting a dental procedure -- which we see, for some reason: "You're free of me now, and I of you." I like the slow, moody structure, with the beautiful, weird shots of fire escapes, catwalks, and sculptures, but it's a little too slow.  How much time do we need to devote to Tom brooding?.

Scene 7: Naples. Tom gets off the train, changes some travelers' checks, and asks for a bus to Atrapi.  He is pushed into a cab instead, and arrives at a darkened station in the middle of the night.  Nothing to do but wait until morning, then get on the real bus -- for a trecherous drive through the mountains!

Atrapi, finally!  He asks someone, in bad Italian, for Richard Greenleaf, and is directed up endless stairs, through arches and corridors, up more stairs. to a villa.  Where he is told that Richard is down on the beach!  Is this supposed to be a comedy?

Scene 8: Tom at a shop, trying on a very bulging swimsuit, while ladies giggle at him. He asks for something a little less revealing. 

The beach is deserted -- oh, there in the distance is Dickie, lying down, fully clothed, with Marge's head on his thigh.  Tom wakes them and introduces himself, pretending that this is a chance meeting. Dickie doesn't remember him, but invites him to go for a swim.  Uh-oh, Tom is afraid of the water, since his parents drowned.  He won't set foot into the water.

More Dickie after the break