5 Best TV Shows Like Black Doves

If you've just finished the 2nd season of Keira Knightley's underworld drama "Black Doves" on Netflix and are looking for your next crime thriller obsession, you've come to the right place. For this feature, we've gone beyond typical recommendations like "Slow Horses," "Killing Eve," or even other great shows starring Keira Knightley to instead suggest five acclaimed series within the murky underworld genre worth seeking out next. These range from globetrotting conspiracy thrillers to self-contained detective stories, with a mix of miniseries and shows with new seasons on the way, ready for you to catch up with in time for their next installments.

Each of the following shows has been chosen based on glowing reviews, with multiple boasting that elusive 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While we can't guarantee satisfaction, we can assure you that these are the best picks for any "Black Doves" fan seeking their next espionage fix.

Brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth are responsible for two of the most talked-about shows on Paramount+. In addition to giving a fresh twist on a Guy Ritchie-style gangster drama with "Mobland," the pair also put their own spin on a classic spy thriller with the overlooked Michael Fassbender series "The Agency," following CIA operative Brandon "Martian" Colby (Fassbender) who is unable to readjust to his day-to-day life after an assignment in Ethiopia. Upon returning to London, he struggles to downplay just how invested he became in his new life, even harboring feelings for anthropology professor Sami Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith), the woman he married under an alias. When she visits London on business, he opens a whole can of worms by continuing to visit her under his fake identity.

Boasting several A-list directors, including Joe Wright and Grant Heslov, "The Agency" is a gripping thriller equal parts romantic and paranoid. Much like Fassbender's exquisite spy thriller "Black Bag," the series poses universal but morally murky questions of how far you'd go to protect someone you love, with Martian digging a deeper hole as the implications of his marriage reverberate across rogue states. Reviews for Season 2 surpassed those of the first, climbing to a glowing 92% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (and a 94% approval from viewers), so don't be surprised if this becomes your next spy thriller obsession.

Adapted from a best-selling Danish novel series, this acclaimed Netflix thriller series transported the action from Scandinavia to Scotland. "Dept. Q" features deeply antisocial but undeniably talented detective lead Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), who is returning to work four months after an injury. He's arrogant and has a hard time playing well with others, so it's no surprise that nobody celebrates his return, and his superior makes him the head of a new unsolved crimes unit to help improve public perception of the police.

Morck may not be the best man for such a public-facing role, but his new office is set up in the basement, hidden far away from everybody else in the station -– one of the main reasons he was chosen for the job. A team of other misfits looking for an opportunity to prove themselves join him, including a civilian Syrian immigrant (Alexej Manvelov), and a young detective recovering from a bad period of mental health (Leah Byrne), although this doesn't change his miserable disposition much. Now mandated to go to therapy to continue his role, Morck is as easily irritable as ever.

Like a more offbeat "Mindhunter" with even more broken protagonists, this series from "Queen's Gambit" creator Scott Frank carved out a distinctive niche within the heavily populated crime procedural genre. Roll on Season 2.

Before "Black Doves," creator Joe Barton made this highly acclaimed BBC crime drama that boasts a rare 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Split between Tokyo and London, Japanese detective Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) heads to the English capital to find his missing brother following rumors that he was killed by a Yakuza member's ancestral sword in retaliation for killing his nephew. 

The answers to whether he's alive and guilty lie half a world away, and with the incident threatening to start a gang war on home turf, he must go deep into London's criminal underworld to find answers. While undercover, he befriends a sex worker (Will Sharpe) and a detective hated within the police for uncovering institutional corruption (Kelly MacDonald) to find answers to a mystery with wide-ranging international repercussions.

Released on Netflix internationally and shamefully cancelled by both networks after a single season, "Giri/Haji" remains a mystery worth getting wrapped up in. There isn't an unresolved cliffhanger we'll never know the answer to, with the season functioning equally as a self-contained miniseries. Even beyond the sprawling crime saga, it's easy to get lost in the intoxicating style, with many reviewers praising its balances of a slow-burning arthouse tone with moments of unflinching graphic violence. 

It's a more ambitious series requiring a lot more patience than "Black Doves," but it just as likely to keep you hooked through its eight-episode run.

As we said at the top, we're avoiding any espionage series that "Black Doves" fans will have already seen, which is why we're looking at this darkly comic German action-thriller perfect for anybody still experiencing "Killing Eve" withdrawal. Set after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kleo Straub (Jella Haase) is seeking revenge after being wrongfully imprisoned for two years in East Berlin for killing a Stasi double agent. 

She realized this was all a conspiracy to frame her, and is now ready to get back on those plotters in a reunified Germany. Her plans are complicated when a policeman who witnessed that murder, unaware of its bigger implications, discovers that it connects back to her and is hot on her heels.

Running for two seasons, "Kleo" is set during one of the richest periods of modern German history, exploring the thawing of Cold War tensions as the heroine tries unpacking why she was set up in the first place. It's a sprawling international saga, crossing continents and revealing more global ramifications with each new rug-pull twist, while never losing its devilish black comedy sensibility. 

With a near perfect 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes across both seasons (with a 100% score for its first), and acclaim from major names like Stephen King, it's a vengeance saga that's essential viewing, its comedic sensibility making its far-reaching conspiracy go down a lot easier.

"Black Doves" isn't the first time Ben Whishaw has played a gay spy, although his Danny Holt in 2015 miniseries "London Spy" is reluctantly forced into becoming an amateur detective after discovering his dead former lover was an MI6 agent. This mysterious man, known to him as Alex (Edward Holcroft), one day disappears without warning, and after mysteriously receiving the key to his flat, Danny discovers he's been killed in an elaborate sex game gone wrong. 

Sensing something off, he tries speaking with journalists, only for them to send back his evidence and publish stories about his troubled history instead. The police refuse to investigate any further, instead questioning him about the link between his sex life and Alex's death.

Written and created by author Tom Rob Smith -– also responsible for "The Assassination of Gianni Versace," the best show bearing the Ryan Murphy producer credit -– this five-part BBC miniseries was deeply divisive upon premiere, but a decade later, now feels like it was ahead of the curve. In a time when governments the world over are targeting queer communities, this paranoid thriller eerily predicted the growing feeling among LGBTQ+ people that their identities would be put on trial, and their histories weaponized against them. 

"London Spy" may push that paranoia to its extreme, unrelenting in punishing Danny in his quest for the truth, but that's largely why it's aged so well. We reckon that reviews wouldn't be so split if this premiered today.