‘We’ll ruin Christmas’: Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw on their gun-packed festive spy thriller

Blood, bullets, bad Santas – Black Doves will guarantee you a raucous holiday season. The stars talk rage, raising kids and what their show has in common with East 17

It has happened almost by stealth, and so incrementally that it might easily have passed without comment, but at last the truth can be revealed: Keira Knightley is out to monopolise Christmas. “Yes, I am planning to take it over,” she confirms primly.

Love Actually, in which her husband’s best friend declares his love for her (creepily, if we’re being honest) via cue cards as fairy lights twinkle around them, is the most overt part of the campaign so far. But don’t forget, too, her roles in the 2018 version of The Nutcracker and the apocalyptic 2021 comedy Silent Night. Now, the new six-part Netflix comedy thriller Black Doves finds her gunning – literally, this time – for the Christmas audience. Knightley plays Helen, a spy recruited years earlier by the M-style boss (Sarah Lancashire) of a shady international intelligence outfit. As the series begins, Helen’s cover as the wife of a prominent MP is about to be blown, endangering the lives of her oblivious husband and children. Enter her protector, Sam, played by Ben Whishaw, whose arrival heralds a family-size helping of Christmas carnage.

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