From Black Doves to Sabrina Carpenter’s Christmas special, here are the 5 must-stream movies and TV shows this weekend

At first glance, it’s a little difficult to understand what’s going on Black pigeonsthe new spy thriller starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw now on Netflix. Who actually are the good guys? Who is spying on whom? And does the whole thing take itself seriously, or is it more of an ironic camp that attacks the genre with every blood-spattered shootout? There’s less of a big reveal at the end of the game that opens viewers’ eyes to a double agent or secret agenda, and more of a convoluted situation that exists from the start. Knightley and Whishaw are the heroes – how could these actors not be? – but maybe also psychopaths.

Let me back up for a moment: Knightley plays Helen Webb, the wife of an up-and-coming British politician (Andrew Buchan), who is staying in a London townhouse decorated to the brim with Christmas cheer. She’s the mother of adorable elementary-age twins, but when she’s not sewing their holiday pageant costumes, she’s passing along secrets she steals from her husband to the Black Doves, the shadowy spy organization that employs her. Her entire domestic situation is, in fact, part of the plot, a precarious situation not helped by the fact that she has fallen in love with a civil servant (who was murdered in the first minutes of the series’ opening episode, but is painfully present). in recurring love flashbacks).

Whishaw is Sam Young, an assassin also employed by the Black Doves and one of the few people who knows Helen’s full story. (That’s not her real name, of course.) Whishaw is a crumpled ruin here, presented as an international man full of secrets (he hasn’t been in the country for several years, he always has a glass of champagne in his hand at the bar, a lost lover pursues him). But Whishaw does something funnier and more layered with the character than that archetype suggests, projecting a kind of sadness and repressed insecurity from his tear-filled eyes even as he mercilessly fires bullets.