In the second episode of “Black Doves,” a new spy series (this one on Netflix), the woman we’ve come to know as Helen Shaw (Keira Knightley) is seen in flashback interviewing for the job she’s now working. Well, kind of.

“Daisy” (her name at the time) answered an advertisement for a position as a translator, but as becomes clearer as her questions continues — sharing details about Helen’s personal history that no typical hiring manager should know — she’s not being asked to convert German to English. She’s being asked to decode identities, intuitions, and ideas. She’s being tested to see if she has the emotional capacity to hide in plain site, to react calmly to obvious provocations, and to get more out of the person sitting across from her than he gets from her. She’s being asked to become a spy.

But, quite notably,...