Featured in Graham Norton and guests: Cher /Keira Knightley/Michael Fassbender/Josh Brolin/Jalen Ngonda (2024)
Plot
Helen embarks on a passionate affair with a man who has no idea what her secret identity is. Caught in the crosshairs when her lover falls victim to the dangerous London underworld, Helen’s employer calls on Sam to protect her.. Bingo, the owner of the guitar shop where Sam gets his guns, is played by Rat Scabies, a member of the band The Damned.. The Tale of New York Written by Jem Finer, Shane MacGowan Performed by The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl.
The trio worked together, but alone, trying to uncover some grand conspiracy
This 6-part spy thriller from Netflix promised a lot, but in the end, it didn’t quite deliver on everything it could have. With a top-notch cast including Keira Knightley as the ninja-punching, gun-toting action heroine, as well as Ben Whishaw as her former mentor and now colleague, expectations were high. Both are operatives for a super-secret mercenary spy organization called the Black Doves, whose controller is Sarah Lancashire, doing her best Judi Dench "M" impersonation in a hideous platinum blonde wig. It certainly starts with a bang when we see three young people murdered in central London.
It’s no big surprise to see how this one plays out
There’s a separate plotline that deals with the off-screen death of the Chinese ambassador to Britain, whose party daughter has also gone missing, threatening various international political conflicts. The two events later merge, both stories overlapping with Knightley and Whishaw’s plots, not least because she, in addition to being married to the government’s defense minister, is herself caught up in the political infighting surrounding the ambassador’s death, and has herself had a passionate affair with one of the three killed at the beginning. Various other characters are introduced into the kaleidoscopic narrative, as Knightley and Whishaw are drawn deeper and deeper into the increasingly inscrutable plot as the body count piles up around them and around them to mountainous proportions, occasionally in their hands, while Whishaw still has time to rekindle an old romance. .
It became tense and exciting again, even if it relied heavily on exposition and didn’t seem to know when to stop
Sharply directed with credible performances from its A-list stars, for me, it somehow failed to live up to its early promise, floundering on an overwrought plot that relied too much on coincidence, gun violence, and quirky, unconventional characters. By the time it was all resolved in the end, I felt it fell somewhere between James Bond-type fantasy and Le Carre-type realism, with escapism unfortunately winning out in the end. When I started watching it, I felt the urge, almost for the first time in history, to binge-watch all the remaining episodes, it seemed so good, but around episode 4, I’m afraid the cracks were showing, which no amount of sharp dialogue and quick wits couldn’t make up for it (and there were some good ones). However, in the end it was and even It was with a Christmas twist like “Die Hard,” but ultimately it all felt too contrived, convoluted, and confusing to really work for me.
Check it out our December calendar for more!
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is one of the biggest TV and streaming premieres this month.