Is 'Black Doves' Based On A True Story?
It's the slippery spy espionage thriller that's kept us hooked since it's release on Netflix on December 5, but for those who may have assumed that Black Doves was entirely fictionalised, it may well be time to think again.
The spy drama, which stars Keira Knightly and Ben Whishaw, wasn't exactly based on a true story per se, but it was inspired by a real-life spy scandal.
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'I had been reading as well about those spy cops, those guys, and they infiltrated that environmental group and had ended up having children with it,' the series' creator, Joe Barton, told Radio Times. 'I mean, a really horrific story, much darker than this.'
The scandal Barton is referring to happened in 2010 when, under the noses of the UK’s top executives, a squad of roughly 140 police officers went undercover into the country’s political groups. As The Guardian reported, these 'spy cops' even married many senior officers. 'The existence of a squad of police officers sent deep undercover in political groups was so top secret that many of the UK’s most senior officers were completely oblivious,' the newspaper noted.
'They infiltrated that environmental group and had ended up having children with it,' Barton said of the group during an interview with Radio Times. 'But I was like, okay, that idea, that duplicitousness of having a pretend marriage lasting years and years and years and then it’s disappeared. That was really part of the inspiration for it as well.'
Barton was also inspired to write Black Doves by the recent drama A Spy Among Friends, which was about the real British spy Kim Philby and his defection to the Soviet Union. 'I like working within established genres but trying to put a twist on them or place "trojan horse human character ideas" into them. I’ve done sci-fi, horror and crime before but had never done [spies],' he told Deadline.
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