It’s the most wonderful time of the year: frantically juggling work dos with gift shopping and carol concerts. Add to that list the small matter of avenging the murder of your secret lover, and things get wild very fast.

This is where we find Keira Knightley’s Helen in the opening episode of Netflix’s six-part spy thriller Black Doves. Married to Wallace (Andrew Buchan), the British defence minister who’s tipped for No 10, she’s the picture of domestic bliss as a dedicated wife and mother to two young twins.

Yet her entire life is a lie. Helen is a spy, employed by the mysterious corporate espionage network the Black Doves. Recruited by Reed, a steely chief conspirator played by Sarah Lancashire, Helen has been leaking sensitive information from the heart of British government to be auctioned to the highest bidder.

When she discovers that her clandestine lover, Jason (Andrew Koji), has been brutally murdered, and a target is now on her back, Helen needs help. Enter her friend Sam, a dishevelled assassin played by Ben Whishaw, who has been flown in to protect her. Embarking on a high-stakes manhunt to find out who killed Jason, the pair are soon tiptoeing around a criminal plot that threatens to bring the government to its knees.

Series creator Joe Barton started writing Black Doves on Boxing Day two years ago while trying to escape the intensity of a big family Christmas. He couldn’t believe his luck when, on finishing the pilot, his management told him that another of their clients, the Oscar-nominated Knightley, was seeking TV work. “I didn’t think anything would come of it, obviously, because it’s Keira Knightley,” Barton laughs. Still, he sent over episode one, which was all that existed then. To his surprise, Knightley was on board.

He had pitched the script to his frequent collaborator Jane Featherstone, executive producer and co-founder of production company Sister. She had worked with Barton on Humans and Giri/Haji and was instantly drawn to his latest script.

“I love his writing, full stop,” Featherstone says. “[Black Doves] was corporate espionage, but in a very grey, muddy world. Heroes and villains were harder to find. It was just this brilliant character piece.”

All that remained was to find a home for the show. Featherstone was out for dinner a week later with Netflix’s Anne Mensah, VP of Original Series, who said she was looking for a contemporary spy thriller. “I had one in my handbag, literally,” Featherstone says.

If you were to back anyone’s pitch for a spy series, it would be Featherstone, the executive producer behind Spooks, the MI5 BBC One mega-hit that ran for 10 series. “Within three weeks, we were greenlit,” she says. “I’ve never known that to happen in my life,” she adds, still stunned by the rapid deal.

Spy series have fallen out of fashion in recent years, the exception being the wondrous Slow Horses. Instead, streamers have injected cash into high-concept ideas such as Squid Game and Severance. Barton’s audacious spin on the contemporary spy thriller could not be more different to the dour espionage tales of old. From explosive arguments on the M25 to – quite literally – exploding out of a building, Knightley and Whishaw are an endless source of fun as bantering, bickering besties.

Add in Sarah Lancashire and the series boasts a stellar leading trio, supported by some of Britain’s finest actors, including Adeel Akhtar, Tracey Ullman and Paapa Essiedu. Kathryn Hunter gives a standout turn as the growling Greek mobster boss Lenny, barking orders at her hapless hitman employees Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy).

“That’s what Joe does. He creates these very specific characters who are very real, very grounded, but exist in this elevated world. It creates such a fresh approach,” Featherstone says.

Though Whishaw won his big-screen acting break as Q, James Bond’s bespectacled gadget man in Skyfall, you won’t find any exploding pens or rocket-firing cigarettes here.

Alex Gabassi (The Crown), who co-directed the series with Lisa Gunning (The Power), was keen to pare back the spyware. “I’d rather use simple devices that indicate what is [happening] than do crazy VFX with lots of screens that will date in three months,” he says.

Similarly, Gunning and Gabassi wanted the many fight scenes to be visceral and emotional, not overly flashy. “I’m obsessed with this idea of epic intimacy,” Gunning says of the huge action sequences that unfold in the final three episodes she directed.

“I don’t believe in directing big-scale things unless there’s a reason – unless they’re feeding into some emotional bank account. So that’s what I always try and do.”

For Gabassi, it was important that the action scenes captured his characters in a scrappy fight for survival. “I love being the one to make Keira’s hair go messy,” Gabassi grins. “It was important to always bring real-life domesticity to it: OK, whatever you have at hand, this is what you use. So use an ashtray, or use that statue,” he explains.

During a particularly violent fight in her kitchen, Helen threatens to pulverise her assailant in a NutriBullet and turn him into a smoothie.

The series was shot on location in London over the festive period last year. Shooting in the capital is notoriously difficult, not least when filming outside high-security locations like the US Embassy at the busiest time of year.

For Gunning, dealing with curveballs on set was part of the fun. “One of my favourite things about film-making is that you get to fly by the seat of your pants. That is my comfort zone,” she says. “Everyone’s on that mission together.”

She recalls urgently needing a piece of Perspex for the final shot of the day – an explosive action scene – when someone found a discarded sheet in a nearby skip. “Human beings on set are incredible – that resourcefulness, the need to just get to the end,” the director enthuses. It may not be what you expect from the glossy world of Netflix, but the shot made the final cut.

“I knew Joe would do a phenomenal job with the dialogue and the characters, and I felt that London deserved the same type of care,” Gabassi says. 

The series travels from the upper echelons of the British Establishment to London’s gritty criminal underworld. In the visual world of Black Doves, greasy caffs and bingo halls are given the same epic treatment as Whitehall’s palatial corridors.

Deviating from the familiar presentation of London as cold, cloudy and grey, Black Doves’ neon-soaked streets sparkle like a Christmas tree. Setting the series in the run-up to Christmas provided the “emotional scaffolding” for Barton to access the human drama behind his gunslinging heroes.

“It’s about people who feel lonely, friendships coming back together, and looking at the past and being quite nostalgic,” he says. “There’s something about Christmas that [can make you] quite reflective.”

Black Doves will return for a second series, Netflix has announced, in a huge vote of confidence from the streamer. With all six episodes having dropped on Netflix in early December, Christmas has come early. Try not to open all your gifts at once.