Don’t Expect James Bond So Much as James Blunt Getting Lost in Thames House
The delightfully awkward British comedy-thriller Black Ops is officially back for its second series — and this time the punchline is bureaucracy. Yes, the same show that saw two under-qualified Police Community Support Officers bumble their way through criminal infiltration is now living out every civil servant’s dream: they’ve been promoted… into MI5.
Created by BAFTA-winning actor and writer Gbemisola Ikumelo, who also stars as Dom, alongside co-creator Akemnji Ndifornyen, Black Ops debuted on BBC One in 2023 and quickly earned critical acclaim for its sharp satire, warm performances, and refusal to take the spy genre even remotely seriously.
From Street Patrol to Spy Paperwork
In Series 1, Dom and her relentlessly upbeat partner Kay (played by Hammed Animashaun) tried to make a difference as PCSOs, only to stumble — largely by accident — into undercover chaos. Their success was never about competence; it was about optimism, luck, and being just sincere enough to survive the mess.
Series 2 escalates that joke beautifully. Dom and Kay now find themselves officially employed by MI5 — not as elite operatives, but as people who appear to have wandered into the building and been handed lanyards. Instead of glamorous missions, they’re faced with admin tasks, intelligence jargon, and the creeping realisation that espionage involves far more filing than firearms.
Before long, though, the pair are dragged into an actual intelligence operation involving a confident, suspiciously smooth spy named Steve (played by Ed Speleers), carnival chaos, and consequences they are wildly unprepared for.
Why It’s Still Hilarious (and Very, Very British)
What Black Ops does best is puncture the mythology of spy culture. This is not martinis and Aston Martins — it’s awkward meetings, unclear instructions, and people pretending they know what acronyms mean.
The humour is distinctly British: dry, absurd, and rooted in social observation. Dom and Kay aren’t idiots; they’re simply navigating systems that were never designed for them. That tension — between institutional seriousness and personal chaos — is where the show thrives.
The industry noticed too. The first series won major awards, including Best Comedy Programme at the Broadcast Awards, with Ikumelo receiving widespread praise for her performance and writing.
Familiar Faces, New Headaches
Alongside the returning leads, Series 2 features a strong supporting cast, including Nigel Havers, Annette Badland, Cathy Tyson, and Tom Stourton — many of whom bring an extra layer of authority that Dom and Kay cheerfully undermine.
Ed Speleers’ Steve, meanwhile, embodies everything our heroes are not: confident, competent, and deeply suspicious of anyone who doesn’t know where the stationery cupboard is.
MI5: Real Agency, Very Unreal Expectations
MI5, of course, is the UK’s real domestic intelligence service, tasked with national security. In reality, it’s unlikely staffed by people who accidentally compromise operations while trying to be helpful — but fiction has recently found rich comedy and drama in showing intelligence work as messy, bureaucratic, and deeply human.
In that sense, Black Ops sits comfortably alongside the growing trend of British spy stories that focus less on glamour and more on dysfunction — only here, the dysfunction is played entirely for laughs.