Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley in Black Doves season 2.
Photo by Matthew Towers/Netflix
Netflix renewed Black Doves for a second season before the series premiered in December 2024. Once it did, the show — a spy series starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw — got very good reviews and spent six weeks in Netflix’s worldwide top 10. It charted for five weeks in the U.S.
The early renewal, followed by critical praise and strong viewing numbers, would lead you to believe that Netflix would want to have Black Doves back on the service relatively quickly. But even on Netflix, a 23-month gap between seasons is not “relatively quickly.”
Netflix has said that on balance, second seasons of its shows haven’t performed worse than usual this year despite some high-profile fall-offs for shows like Beef and The Four Seasons. But doing things like waiting nearly two years between seasons of a rather twist-heavy show like Black Doves won’t help things.
Without consulting anything online, I remember that Knightley’s character is an operative for an espionage organization called the Black Doves and is married to a British government official. Whishaw’s character is a hitman who works with her, and they’re good friends. His work gets in the way of his relationships. People are trying to kill Knightley. Somewhere in the second half of the season, there’s a shootout in an apartment belonging to two other women characters, who I think helped out Knightley and Whishaw at some point? Sarah Lancashire is also there as a higher-up in the Black Doves.
Had it been less than 23 months, I might remember more. I suspect I’m not alone in that regard. But Black Doves, despite the early renewal, didn’t begin production on season 2 until late last year. Dribs and drabs of interviews with people involved suggest that the new season took a while to be written — Whishaw said early last year that there weren’t scripts for season 2 yet — and filming was scheduled to run for 20 weeks starting sometime last fall.
That’s for six episodes, incidentally. In the time since Black Doves last aired, the average network drama has aired 30-some episodes. Other streaming shows have figured out a faster cadence too: The Diplomat has had two seasons (16 episodes total) since December 2024. So have The Night Agent and Reacher, among others.
My complaint here isn’t with Black Doves as a piece of TV: I’m looking forward to seeing the second season. But whatever forces combined to keep season 2 from arriving sooner have done the show no favors. We’re gonna need one heck of a “previously on” reminder before the first episode.
Premieres, specials and finales happening this week are below. All times are ET/PT unless noted.
