More Entertainment with Marcianne Miller

Black Doves: A British spy thriller series starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw. 

Lonely Planet: A romantic drama featuring Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth, set in Morocco. 

Carry-On: A high-tension thriller set in Los Angeles, among millions of suitcases racing down conveyors, starring Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman.

Three wonderful new Netflix shows bring in the new year with lively applause! In Black Doves, British spies translate espionage into a wild tale of secret loves and vows of vengeance. In Lonely Planet, an age-gap passion rises in a unique romantic setting in North Africa. Carry-On is a brilliant, high-tension thriller set in Los Angeles, among millions of suitcases racing down conveyors.

Black Doves

Espionage thrillers are always complicated stories, but usually, you know what country the individual spies are dedicated to. That’s not the case in Black Doves—the spies in this English spectacular are not faithful government servants. All they want is lots of money and the luck to stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

Helen (Keira Knightley, Anna Karenina, 2012) is an extremely troubled young woman with a horrendous history and no future. But she has good looks and great smarts—which make white-haired talent searcher (Sarah Lancashire) sure she could be transformed into the Black Doves, a powerful secret society of spies for hire. One of Helen’s trainers is brilliant sharpshooter Sam (Ben Whishaw, Fargo, 2020). He and Helen form a loving loyalty to one another, even though Sam is quite gay. In a constantly increasing cast of fascinating characters, ones you love, ones you hate, Knightly and Whishaw remain so captivating that you have to fight yourself not to stop the program and play their scenes again.

A few years later, Helen is now the wife of England’s secretary of Defense, mother to their adorable twins, and a stunning social butterfly. She has everything any English society woman would dream of having. She’s also having a passionate affair with a man named Jason, with whom she wants to leave England and start a new life. When she learns Jason has been assassinated, her grief becomes an unrelenting promise to seek revenge, no matter the cost.

Such a simple beginning gets more complicated with each minute, with no one trusting anyone, and more people, many men and more women than you can count, racing forward on the trail of someone or some group they want to kill. Contradicting the violence are the fantastic, wonderful-to-look-at English-style locations in town and country, from pubs to cathedrals, with wild parties and powerful people everywhere.

You’ll love every minute of Black Doves—and be thrilled there’s going to be a second season next year.

Set in Europe, shot in Toronto. English with some foreign language subtitles.

TV-MA, for mature audiences, violence. Fine for adults and teens willing to appreciate complicated stories.

Six episodes. Time: 55 minutes for each episode on Netflix.

Lonely Planet

This is a quiet love story about two very different adults, who meet in a fabulously different place on the planet—and realize, eventually, two things—that their differences are what makes them special for one another and that indeed, travel is the best inspiration for romance.

Katherine (Laura Dern, Oscar for 2022’s Marriage Story) is a famous, successful novelist who rushes to a writer’s retreat in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco. While struggling with her novel, she also hopes she can figure out what to do with her life—now that her former partner just had his cancer cured and ended their 14-year relationship of living on a farm together.

The usual assortment of writers is at the retreat, some famous, some not, an alcoholic or two. Among them is celebrated first-time novelist 20-something Lily Kemp (Diana Silvers) and her very non-literary financial advisor boyfriend, Owen (Australian actor Liam Hemsworth, The Hunger Games). The writers disappear on group touristy events, leaving Katherine and Owen back at the retreat house.

With no planning, they find themselves together in a car that breaks down in the countryside—and they end up having a lovely lunch with a magnanimous Arab family. They also watch the funniest thing I have ever seen in a film—a herd of goats sitting high up on branches in a tree, enthusiastically eating leaves.

They accidentally have other tourist non-writer events, seeing much of the fascinating countryside, and of course, start getting to know one another. She is a writer who lives in her head, and he is a former football player who misses the excitement of the game. Eventually, time and starry nights and Moroccan food make them wonder if 50-something Katherine and 30-something Owen can allow love to do its grand thing for them? We hope so!

Then tragedy—a motorcycle robber steals Katherine’s briefcase with her unsaved novel in it. (I almost passed out seeing that!) She runs back to the U.S. so quickly she doesn’t even make time for a goodbye kiss with Owen.

Then, years later, after Katherine speaks to fans about her new novel, on the sidewalk at night in Manhattan….

MPA rating R for language, some sexual content, and brief nudity. Great for adults, but not enough action for most teens. 

Shot in Morocco, North Africa. 

Languages: English and some Arabic

Time: 1:34 on Netflix. 

Carry-on

Carry-on was so exciting, so surprising, so attention-grabbing that I sat without moving a muscle for its entire two hours. When I finally moved, all I could do was say to myself, “That was one heck of a movie!” 

Ethan (Taron Egerton, Rocketman) and his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) are excited about their baby to come. However, Nora is worried that Ethan is unhappy with his current job as a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent, who inspects passengers and their luggage at the airport for potential security issues. She wants him to re-apply to the Los Angeles Police Department, which turned him down last year. Ethan worries he doesn’t have the courage to risk failing again.  

It’s Christmas-time in LAX when some 19 million people are flying. The airport is sparkling with decorations and everybody is in a hurry and stressed out to get through the annoying inspection process. 

Through lots of twists and strange happenings, Ethan finds himself connected through an earpiece to an unnamed man called The Traveler (Jason Bateman, Ozark), who can see everything Ethan does. The stranger orders Ethan to allow a suitcase marked with a red ribbon to go through the scanner—and thus get into the airplane without being detected. Taron realizes the suitcase is meant to blow up the plane and send thousands of passengers to their deaths. If Ethan stops the package, the Traveler will kill Sofia, who he is watching as she works in the airport lobby.

By listening carefully, Ethan identifies the Traveler and their conflict becomes a battle between two characters who can now see one another. Each minute the men are trying to accomplish their disparate goals while unpredicted problems and interfering people threaten them both.

Ethan searches the colossal luggage conveyor belts for the bomb suitcase. Then, he speeds off in a luggage cart to rush into the cargo area of the plane before it takes off. The Traveler is already there, laughing as he prepares his parachute to escape from the plane.

And then—oh, you gotta see this movie!!

Rated PG-13 for strong violence, bloody images, some language, and suggestive references. Okay for mature teens.

Set in Los Angeles International Airport but shot in an unused wing of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

Languages: English

Time: 1: 59 on Netflix. 

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