A Business Of Codes:Black Doves.

"I have no idea who I am .... and neither does anybody else" - Helen Webb

Shootings, stabbings, throat slittings, exploding Christmas decorations, and a threat to use a Nutribullet to turn someone into a smoothie. The London of Netflix's Black Doves (created and written by Joe Barton, directed by Lisa Gunning and Alex Gabassi) is certainly a more violent London than the one I recognise and live in.

Even if it is, in many other ways, very much the London I recognise and live in. Waterloo Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Leadenhall Market, Liberty's, Arnold Circus, The Coal Hole pub on The Strand, The Kings Arms on Roupell Street, and The Windmill Theatre in Soho. This is the London I live in and it's also the London that Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) lives in.

Helen Webb is a 'black dove'. A spy for hire. She's married to Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan), the Tory Secretary of State for Defence and has two young children in Jacqueline (Charlotte Rice-Foley) and Oli (Taylor Sullivan) with him. They live in a big posh house and to all the outside world appear to have a very nice life. 

But Wallace doesn't know that Helen is a spy and is, anyway, dealing with a big scandal involving the murder of a Chinese ambassador and the disappearance of the ambassador's daughter Kai-Ming (Isabella Wei). When Helen's boss, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), informs Helen of the murder of Helen's lover Jason (Andrew Koji) and two others (reporter Philip Bray (Thomas Coombes) and Maggie Jones (Hannah Khalique-Brown) who works in a jewellery shop) and tells Helen she herself is in danger it seems inevitable that that story and the story of the Chinese ambassador and his daughter will eventually come together.

Reed calls in 'triggerman' Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) to protect Helen and help her investigate Jason's murder but, of course, in the world of spies, nothing is ever as it first seems. Sam and Helen have some history but it's not initially clear what that history is. Why did Jason, Philip, and Maggie get killed? Who killed them? Will they stop there? What do CIA black arts operatives have to do with it all? And who are the Clark family? A criminal organisation so powerful that even the black doves don't seem to know about them. And the black doves know a lot about a lot of things. It's a business of codes.

In trying to answer all these questions Black Doves proves to be highly enjoyable, slick, and compelling yet also very far fetched and with a plot full of holes. It's best to ignore loose ends that don't tie up and sign up for a thrill ride and a story of murderous stepsisters, former SAS killers, Croydon drug dealers, gang hideouts in Peckham, false identities, Kent Brockman from The Simpsons, and a Brita water filter.

There are lots of great supporting performances. Omari Douglas as Sam's ex-lover Michael, Paapa Essiedu as contract killer Elmore Fitch, Gabrielle Creevy and Ella Lily-Hyland as comical killers Eleanor and Williams, Adeel Akhtar as the Prime Minister, Agnes O'Casey as Wallace Webb's secretary Dani, Kathryn Hunter as mob boss Lenny Lines, and Tracey Ullman as another gangland supremo. In fact hearing Tracey Ullman say the word 'cuntstruck' is worth the viewing time alone. You don't get that on a 7" single of Move Over Darling.

Netflix dropped the show last Christmas so, of course, the soundtrack is full of festive cheer courtesy of The Pogues, Mud, Eartha Kitt, Paul McCartney, East 17, The Ronettes, Slade, Wham!, and Johnny Cash (Raye chips in with a cover of Cher's Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) - can you see what they've done there? - over the end credits) and there are excellent levels of duplicity throughout which, depending on how your own family rock, may also speak to you of the festive season.

Some of the shoot ups look as if they've been stolen from computer games, many of the fight scenes could be ripped straight from Tarantino films, and the banter (often reminiscent of Martin McDonagh's In Bruges or the work of Harry and Jack Williams) is witty rather than outright hilarious. Apart from, perhaps, the line about somebody drinking as heavily as a "Russian submarine captain having a mental breakdown". I can see myself using that in the future.

I'm not sure I was ever emotionally invested in the story of black dove Helen Webb, triggerman Sam Young, Tory MP Wallace Webb, or the frosty jefe Reed but I binge watched Black Doves not just because there wasn't much else on but because it was tense and addictive. The characters didn't seem real, the story didn't seem real, and the action didn't seem real but the enjoyment and the thrill all felt pretty real and sometimes that's enough. As a door closes, a window opens.