Black Doves TV Pilot Beat Sheet Analysis
Why We Chose to Do a Save a Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis of the Black Doves Pilot
Black Doves was the #1 TV series on Netflix, so we wanted to see what makes the pilot tick.
Black Doves
Created and Written by: Joe Barton
S1 E1: “To Love Then”
The World: Modern-day London, swinging between the hallowed halls of government and the gritty streets of the criminal underworld
Franchise Type: Whydunit
Pilot Episode Genre: Buddy Love
The 3 elements of a BUDDY LOVE story are:
- An incomplete hero who is missing something physical, ethical, or spiritual; (s)he needs another to be whole.
- A counterpart who makes that completion come about or has qualities the hero needs.
- A complication, be it a misunderstanding, personal or ethical viewpoint, epic historical event, or the prudish disapproval of society.
Platform: Netflix
TV Genre: Hourlong drama/thriller
Story DNA
Heroes: Helen Webb, wife of the Secretary of State for Defense and an undercover spy for the Black Doves; her old friend Sam Young, a hitman for hire who has just returned to London after a long absence
Goal: For Helen, to find out who killed her lover while also carrying out her job as a Black Dove; for Sam, to protect Helen and finish a job he abandoned seven years prior
Obstacle: Helen runs the risk of blowing her cover by investigating her lover’s death; Sam is hunted and haunted by his past, and Helen’s dogged drive to know the truth makes his job exponentially more difficult
Stakes: Helen and Sam are in a very dangerous business and stand to lose their lives at every turn; but more importantly, and the element that gives Black Doves its emotional core, they fear for their loved ones’ safety as a result of their criminal involvement
Save the Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis for the Black Doves TV Pilot
Opening Image
We open on a lively British pub at Christmastime where a tipsy Santa weaves out into the street, passing a frightened man on his phone telling two friends that he’s being followed by nefarious parties. This juxtaposition of normal life and its seamy underbelly sets the stage for a tale of secrets and intrigue where nothing is ever as it seems.
Theme Stated
After Helen makes an unusually sweet toast at their Christmas party, Wallace quips to their friends, “Did you know she was a sentimentalist?” To which Helen quips back, “I’m a cold-hearted cynic!” Of course, she’s both—and this dichotomy will drive the action of Black Doves for Helen, Sam, and all their cohorts.
Set-Up
In her thesis world, Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) tends to her kids and soothes her frazzled husband Wallace (Andrew Buchan) as he bemoans the difficulty of his job as the Secretary of State of Defense, specifically, the circumstances surrounding the recent death of the Chinese ambassador to the UK. Unbeknownst to Wallace, Helen is feeding all the secrets and inner workings of the government to Mrs. Reed (Sarah Lancashire), her handler for the Black Doves, a mercenary organization that sells information to the highest bidder. Pretty stomach-churning stuff, but Helen’s genuine love for her children gives us enough Save the Cat! energy to buy in to her character.
In his thesis world, Sam (Ben Whishaw) is an assassin for hire who returns to London after seven years at the behest of Reed, but the city is a place of ghosts and bad memories for him that the pilot only hints at; part of the season-long Whydunit will be solving the mystery of Sam’s broken compass and why his shard of glass led him to be a hitman.
Catalyst
Helen discovers that her lover Jason Davies (Andrew Koji) has been murdered.
Debate
Helen is devastated. She’s used to being at the sweet center of every mystery, but everything about this is confounding, from her handler being the one to break the news, to Jason’s death pointing at a larger conspiracy. Reed is disgusted by Helen’s carelessness and refuses to accept that Helen had been in love with Jason; the entire Black Dove organization is now at risk and if Helen wasn’t their only connection to the prime minister, she would be out—or dead.
Break into Two
Helen chokes back her tears and puts on an adoring smile for her husband. Life must go on, especially for a Black Dove.
B Story
Even though Helen is mourning Jason and Sam can’t get over his ex, the real “love story” is Helen and Sam’s genuine affection for each other. No one else could possibly understand them but another liar-for-hire and their relationship will be a rare truth in a world of falsehoods.
Fun and Games
While Sam christens his return to London by having sex with a handsome stranger in his hotel room, Helen reels into her post-Jason antithesis world with tears—and resolve. Despite Reed’s admonition to “do nothing,” she searches for clues, pulling apart the Christmas gift he’d given her, and then goes to check out Jason’s flat where she pulls a hard drive from a secret safe in the wall. Helen is interrupted by two female police officers who, of course, are not real cops but assassins out to kill her. A bloody and brutal knife fight ensues.
Midpoint
In a false victory, Sam appears with a shotgun just in time to splatter the brains of one of the assassins all over Helen’s face. She’s incredibly happy to see him, even though her expression is hard to read because, again, she has brains splattered all over her face.
Bad Guys Close In
Now that Helen realizes just how much danger she’s in, she makes Sam swear that he will protect her and her family as she vows to find out who killed Jason and exact her revenge. Neither of them really has the power or all the necessary information to keep such promises, but they’re from the heart; honor amongst thieves and all that.
After Sam goes to his local machine gun store/guitar shop to stock up on weapons, an old friend recognizes him on the street, drawing him uncomfortably into the past. We find out that Sam was in love with Michael (Omari Douglas) and as much as he’s tried to dismiss it, the pain is still fresh seven years later.
Helen cradles her sleeping children in her arms, genuinely afraid for their lives. She examines the hard drive which contains all of Jason’s burner phone information, getting teary-eyed over the progression of their relationship in texts.
All Is Lost
Helen discovers Jason had been calling Kai-Ming, the missing daughter of the Chinese ambassador, on the day he died. Sam finds out that Michael married and now has a daughter.
Dark Night of the Soul
Although he always assumed Michael would have to move on, Sam is visibly crushed by this news. Helen is heartsick as she comes to terms with the possibility that her original “random” meeting with Jason may have been some kind of set-up and perhaps their true love was just another one of the falsehoods of her dirty profession.
Break into Three/Break into Series
Sam finds out that Jason was killed by someone named Elmore Fitch. He calls Helen, who goes into her fake-undies-drawer-with-a-hidden-compartment and pulls out her gun. The B story “lovers” are now preliminarily bonded and on the prowl, but who knows what the cost (or body count) will be for them to achieve synthesis—with themselves, each other, and all the innocent people they purport to love.
