Brief Story Line
Helen Webb (Keira Knightley - Official Secrets, Pride and Prejudice etc) was the wife of Secretary of State for Defence Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan - All the Money in the World, Broadchurch TV series etc) who was actually a spy working for an organization selling secrets to highest bidder called Black Dove. When some people were mysteriously killed in one night, Helen's handler Reed (Sarah Lancashire - Coronation Street TV series, Everybody's Talking About Jamie etc) got worried that it might implicate the Black Dove. To help Helen deal with this problem, Reed called her former Triggerman Sam (Ben Whishaw - No Time to Die, Paddington etc) to come out of retirement and protect Helen.
As Helen tried to investigate the murders, she found that it involved a much bigger issue that could endanger her and her family. Things got more complicated with Sam's past that could also hinder his job.
So what would happen to Helen and Sam? And what was the real reason for the murders? You could find out in the first season of this series.
End of Brief Story Line
This series was entertaining for me from the start. It was fast paced and did not take long to get to the interesting part. And the good thing was, it was not as complicated as I worried would be since the story was easy enough to understand. What made me enjoy it better was the action sequence which was quite seriously done even for a TV series. Throughout the whole 6 episodes (yes it was only having 6 of them, just like other British series), there were plenty of fist fights and some well executed gun fights.
To my surprise, when I watched the closing credits, I did not see anything this series was based on. So the series creator Joe Barton (director of The Union and creator of Giri/Haji crime series) must be applauded for his creativity, especially since the series was receiving a lot of praise from critics. Although a lot of things seemed to be taken from other series/movies/books, Barton's ability to combine all of them into an enjoyable story was pretty awesome. However, the back story of Sam felt too unoriginal for me as it seemed very similar to the background of Joe Petrus, the lead character in Culprits mini series (not the best part to my opinion). The rest though was OK.
The cast did wonderful job in portraying their roles. I admired Keira Knightley's ability in here (she was nominated for Best Actress in Critics Choice Awards) and Ben Whishaw who was able to show his agility. Apart from the names I mentioned above, there were several recurring cast such as Andrew Koji (Bullet Train, Warrior TV series etc) as one of the victims Jason Davies, Omari Douglas (It's a Sin TV series etc) as Sam's ex boyfriend Michael, Sam Troughton (Robin Hood 2006 TV series etc) as Stephen Yarrick, Ella Lily Hyland as one of the assassins Williams, Isabella Wei (1899 TV series etc) as Kai-ming and few others.
Btw, the series itself had duration of a little over 50 minutes in each episode. The first 3 episodes were directed by Alex Gabassi while the remaining were directed by Lisa Gunning (whose prior experience including directing some episodes of Prime Video's The Power series). My most favorite would be the 5th episode and I also liked the finale as it got some nice surprising twist that I did not see coming. It had a pretty conclusive ending to me, but I thought there were few things that could be explored further in subsequent seasons. From what I read on the internet, this series had been renewed even before its release. So I guess Netflix was very confident with the quality of the series and expected it to be a huge success. Let's see if it can maintain its quality like in the first season.
Overall this was an interesting spy thriller series with good story telling, without having overly complicated plot, got some nice action and with only 6 episodes per season did not take too much time to finish. The London and Christmas setting was a nice touch, giving me the pleasure of seeing what it would be like during the festive period there. But of all the qualities of the series (aside from the personal life of Sam that I thought was too dramatic and not that interesting & original), I still think that another British spy thriller titled Slow Horses (already renewed for 6th season) was better in term of story and dry humor. Nevertheless, it was still a refreshing to see this on Netflix and hopefully it would grow better.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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