The ruminative fourth episode of Joe Barton’s spy thriller Black Doves Season 2 is the show’s backbone. The magnificently titled episode, ‘The Opportunity to Become Savage,’ is set in 1988 and tells of events that have implications in the present. The episode explains how the secret spy organisation Black Doves’ operation in Berlin resulted in murders and betrayal in the present.

A week before Wallace (Andrew Buchan) becomes the Prime Minister, his wife, Helen (Keira Knightley), a long-time Black Dove operative, is in Paris stealing a file from a Russian oligarch, Goran Kostic (Alexi Chernov). The Black Doves assassin, Sam (Ben Whishaw), is arrested for a hit and released by a mysterious man who offers him freedom in exchange for four hits.

When Helen’s handler, Elizabeth Reed (Sarah Lancashire), goes missing and she gets a new handler, Mr. Conteh (Babou Ceesay), who she does not trust, things get murkier. The casual approach to violence lowers the stakes considerably.

The fact that no matter how many bullets are fired, the villains’ heads are blown off with alarming efficiency, while Sam and friends escape with nary a scratch also contributes to the lack of tension. Also, how is it that as the Prime Minister’s wife, Helen is able to rush off wherever she wishes and meet whoever she wants to without security and press scrutiny?

The inner lives of people who kill for a living are becoming a little tired. Unless the exploration contributes to the story, like Jason Bourne’s amnesia, the assassin’s dilemma should be let go.

The series is unable to make up its mind whether it wants to be gritty and realistic or cartoonish and self-aware. The fourth episode goes for realistic and is effective for that choice. It is the episode where people do foolish things for love and ideals, which leads to old sins casting very long shadows. 

So if Sam and gang shoot up zillion nameless thugs in the present, will the thugs’ families come looking for revenge at a later date? The chemistry between Knightley and Whishaw is less forced than it was in Season 1, but still falls short of being fully convincing.

Laila (Ambika Mod) is a fun addition to Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor’s (Gabrielle Creevy) psycho girl gang. Neve Campbell as Defence envoy, Cecile Mason, does a respectable version of the annoying American.

The music is a mix of pop favourites from Billy Joel’s ‘She’s Always a Woman’ and Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘500 Miles’ to Nina Simone’s rendition of the African American traditional spiritual, ‘Sinnerman’ and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang’ (naturally).

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There are some cool lines, including Lenny (Kathryn Hunter) telling Sam, “These are strange times to be nefarious,” and “Are liberty and freedom the same,” as well as a crack about a “gay Miss Marple and a lesbian Hercule Poirot.”

Season 2 is better plotted than Season 1, but the lack of committing to either side, Spy Vs Spy-adjacent splatter-fest or Le Carré-style moral decrepitude, ends up shooting the handsomely mounted if frenetic show in the foot.

Black Doves is currently streaming on Netflix