What to stream this week: Keira Knightley is back in Black Doves, plus five more picks

This week’s picks include the return of Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw’s London assassins in Black Doves, Hudson’s Williams’ first post-Heated Rivalry gig, a bonkers reality show hosted by Parker Posey and season six of sweet-hearted sitcom Abbott Elementary.

Black Doves ★★★★ (Netflix)

Delightfully pulpy and propulsive, Netflix’s spy thriller Black Doves isn’t the show you’d expect to win over Keira Knightley, one of the few esteemed actors who had avoided television, missing the prestigious wave entirely.

It’s maybe why, when the show’s first season dropped in 2024, I assumed it was a dour, restrained spy drama. In short, I was completely wrong. If anything, Black Doves’ first season was a little too chaotic, with copious blood, twists and tinsel, as spy duo Helen Webb (Knightley) and Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) fought for their lives, often destroying Christmas decorations across London in the process.

With creator Joe Barton (Giri/Haji, Amadeus) back at the helm, season two doesn’t slow down but it’s less crowded, dropping both the festive season schtick and the excessive backstory. (The exception is a sluggish fourth episode cramming together flashbacks and side-plots.)

Still undercover, Helen remains married to Wallace (Andrew Buchan), a British MP about to become PM through a Tory leadership spill – all to the plan of the Black Doves, the agency Helen works for, vacuuming up government secrets so they can be sold to the highest bidder.

Before you worry that moving into 10 Downing Street would impede Helen’s ability to undertake covert missions, Helen’s season two body count reaches double digits within 10 minutes as she sneaks off from a charity gala to crack into a hotel room safe. To be fair, she has help: With Sam leaving the Doves, Helen’s handler Reed (Sarah Lancashire) teams her up with Laila (Ambika Mod), a Gen Z agent who dismisses Helen as a “spy wife”.

Wouldn’t the First Lady be tailed 24/7 by security? Not in the Black Doves world, where Helen can kill henchmen in broad daylight, unidentifiable due to a baseball cap that her allies call outright preposterous. As with the first season, don’t think too hard about it; that’s easy enough, as the plot speeds so fast any holes register as funny bumps.

What exactly is the second season’s plot? Reed goes missing and Helen doesn’t trust her replacement handler; Sam, wanting out, is blackmailed into a series of kills that could be linked to Reed. Both worry they’re losing their edge, regret when they violently lash out to prove otherwise – and, deep within, remain haunted by the killers they have become, with Knightley and Whishaw letting that fear flood through in overwhelming flashes.

Much like Black Doves itself, Helen and Sam constantly chase the thrill of action, knowing they could fall apart completely if they pause for too long. That works for now, but maybe not another season.

Yaga ★★★ (Binge)

A witch from Slavic folklore descends upon a small Canadian town in Yaga – a sexy supernatural thriller and feminist exhumation of Baba Yaga, though it’s primarily been marketed as Hudson Williams’ first gig since Heated Rivalry. Two gigs, technically: Williams plays Henry, a brattish heir (blinding blue contacts), and his roommate (glasses, emerald eyes), neither making much impact.

Yaga opens with Henry’s disappearance. His parents send in his longtime friend Rapp (Noah Reid, Schitt’s Creek) as an investigator, though he’s initially more focused on every woman her meets. Despite dripping with chauvinism, Rapp proves irresistible to many and intriguing to others, such as local detective Carson (Clark Backo) and the commanding university professor Dr Hargrove (Carrie-Anne Moss, The Matrix), a bone expert and author of a book titled Sexy Bones.

At least one person isn’t a fan of Rapp: whoever nailed a burning chicken carcass to his hotel door, the first of many occult occurrences. While over-reliant on dream sequences and hallucinations, Yaga’s mystical moodiness is intoxicating – as is its strange sense of humour, such as the Russian-language covers of Blondie and Nancy Sinatra during the credits.

Across the seven of eight episodes available for review, Yaga is intriguing yet a little heavy-handed, with lines such as “a witch is just somebody society has decided they’re afraid of” perhaps working better in creator Kat Sandler’s 2019 play of the same name.

The Mob ★★★ (Disney+)

Parker Posey (The White Lotus) camps it up as host of The Mob, the latest reality riff on The Traitors, which leans into its mafia-theme with more cheese than a carbonara. Twelve celebrities form a crime family, compete with Mafia-themed challenges, and try to avoid being “whacked” by the Don, the group’s elected lead, who also can be rolled each episode. Too nonsensical to match The Traitors’ mind games, The Mob is best when competitors play into the mystery theatre feel. Debi Mazar (Goodfellas), Aida Turturro (The Sopranos) and Joe Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey) clearly have a great time.

Abbott Elementary ★★★★ (Disney+)

Six seasons in, Abbott Elementary remains my go-to for a sweet-hearted sitcom. It’s a warm, funny mockumentary about teachers trying to make do at an underfunded, predominantly Black public school in Philadelphia, inspired by creator-star Quinta Brunson’s mum. For the most part, the series hasn’t messed with its magic.

More episodes than not see terminally optimistic Janine (Brunson) overextend herself, such as the season six opener where she loses her sanity decorating her classroom.

Paolo ★★★ (HBO Max)

Admiration becomes deadly obsession in Paolo, a seven-part psychological thriller from France in the vein of Ripley. Where Paolo – a Portuguese piano mover played by a menacing Jerome Niel – learns that a high-society ex-schoolmate (Yoann Gasiorowski) is running in a local election, it stirs up powerful discomforts and desires, drawing Paolo to volunteer. It’s not long before blood spills, but Paolo’s a slow burn. A dense focus on the campaign’s machinations may link Paolo’s rage to a wider political context, but it will turn off those wanting France’s answer to Saltburn.

The Oldest Person in the World ★★★★ (DocPlay)

For the past decade, experimental documentarian Sam Green has travelled the globe meeting the oldest person in the world, a Guinness World Record title that continually shifts as the record holders die. Do they hold the secret to life? That’s what Green hopes to capture, though his interviews with supercentenarians – all but one are women – are often filled with platitudes, the weight of their experiences never quite translated. Via contemplative voiceover, Green questions our fascination with the world’s oldest people and is remarkably raw about his motivations, including a health scare, his brother’s suicide and son’s birth.

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