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Black Doves, Netflix’s ace answer to Slow Horses, blasts back this month with a second season that builds, and even improves, on the excellent first run.
Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), a spy with the covert Black Doves agency, is now the PM’s wife. Her bestie Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) is nursing all sorts of sorrows and traumas in a swanky London hotel. Enter a covert and equally menacing third party, and its ominous front man (Sam Riley), with a demand that will bring the sudden and violent end to this temporary calm.
Created and written by Joe Barton, the show’s use of London locations is as smart as you’d expect from the man behind Soho-based thriller Giri/Haji. Season 2 mixes unexpected uses of familiar landmarks – the South Bank, Trafalgar Square, Somerset House – with lesser-spotted corners of the city. The show’s geography hangs together pretty well, too, which will please any A-Z purists out there.
Here’s where season 2 was filmed.
The opening hotel raid was filmed at Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Paris
We catch up with Helen and her husband, and now Prime Minister, Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan) at a formal dinner in Paris. Making her excuses, Helen heads for a nearby hotel to break into the suite of Russian diplomat and steal a flash drive. She’s joined in the lift by ‘the muscle’, blunt-talking Leila (Ambika Mod), who labels her with the insult ‘spy wife’. The scene was shot at Hôtel Plaza Athénée, where a suite will set you back about £4000/night.
Sam and Helen meet to review the stolen flashdrive at The Fryer’s Delight, Holborn
The old friends meet for a late night cuppa at this legendary Theobald’s Road chippy. It’s been dishing up fish and chips cooked in beef dripping since 1958.
Sam and Patrick meet at Corbet Place in Spitalfields
Sam Riley’s mysterious fixer Patrick is a new addition to season 2. He holds kompromat that enables him to lure Sam to an ad hoc office building and give him a new mission. The exteriors of the alley the pair walk down were filmed in Spitalfields’ graffiti-adorned Corbet Place, adjacent to the Truman Brewery. The old brewery itself stood in for the exteriors of Black Doves’ Cold War Berlin HQ in the flashback scenes.
Sam’s hotel scenes were filmed at the Rosewood Hote in High Holborn
Central London’s biggest 5-star hotel, the Rosewood, is where Sam holes up during season 2.
Gray’s Inn stands in for Number 10 Downing Street
The real Downing Street being off-limits to film crews, TV and films have often turned to the Royal Society of Arts on John Adam Street, just south of the Strand, as an alternative. Black Doves season 2 went for another street, Jockey’s Fields in Gray’s Inn, for Helen Webb and her newly anointed PM husband’s arrival at Number 10).
Laila’s flat is in Gerrard Street, Chinatown
Blacklisted Black Dove Laila lives in a swanky pad in that quiet, secluded part of the city: Chinatown. The sweary spy is based slap-bang in the middle of Gerrard Street, which presented obvious production challenges with Mod, Knightley and Whishaw all needing to be filmed on the busy, lantern-draped thoroughfare. According to Barton, you can even see Knightley’s protection agent in one shot.
Soho’s Jack Solomons stands in for several season 2 club scenes
Even spies and trigger men need to unwind with a drink or 12 after a hard day of gun battles, and in season 2 they do most of it in Soho’s elegant subterranean cocktail bar Jack Solomons. The Great Windmill Street venue stands in for multiple venues, including a nightclub in episode 4 and a jazz bar in episode 5. Sophie’s restaurant upstairs doubles as the tapas restaurant where Sam takes fellow assassins Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy) and Williams (Ella Lily Hyland).
Leila and Helen chase sequence was filmed at Somerset House
A standout sequence in episode 2 has Leila and Helen being chased through an art exhibition at Somerset House. ‘It’s all part of it,’ Leila tells bystanding art lovers as she whacks one of the chasing goons with a fire extinguisher.
Conteh meets Helen outside the National Theatre
The Black Doves’ enigmatic but increasingly annoyed boss Mr Conteh (Babou Ceesay) summons Helen to a Thameside meeting, hoping to extract Sam’s exact whereabouts from her. The South Bank played a key role in season 1: Helen’s lover, Jason (Andrew Koji), was assassinated a few hundred yards away, which must be playing on her mind during this testy exchange.
Is there a season 2 trailer?
Sure is. Watch it below.
When does Black Doves season 2 streaming?
All six episodes are on Netflix now.
Black Doves filming locations: where was the trending Netflix show shot?