Netflix's Black Doves is back for a second round, with Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley reprising their roles as hitman Sam and spy Helen, and Sarah Lancashire returning as their handler Reed. New faces include Ambika Mod as the deadpan Laila, plus rival schemers played by Sam Riley and Babou Ceesay. Writer Joe Barton keeps the tone loose — a knowing nod to Bond and Le Carré that never takes itself too seriously.

What makes the show a gift for location spotters is how little of it is studio work. Season one shot at nearly 100 real London locations, and season two keeps that habit, sprinting from Soho to Stepney while also jumping to Paris, a Rome-area hill town and the English countryside.

In London, the stand-outs are genuinely visitable. Sam broods at the Rosewood London on High Holborn, a former Pearl Assurance HQ turned five-star hotel that recently housed Taylor Swift during her Eras Tour dates. Sam and Helen reunite over chips at The Fryer's Delight on Theobalds Road, while Gray's Inn doubles for the Downing Street exteriors. Soho's Jack Solomons Club, a former boxing gym on Great Windmill Street, plays both restaurant and jazz bar. East of the city, the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane houses both Laila's warehouse base and the show's Berlin HQ, with the historic George Tavern in Stepney standing in for a Berlin bar. Southwark's St Paul's Church Newington, with its striking 1960s folded copper roof, appears in the finale, and Reed's glassy penthouse is — surprisingly — Jeffrey Archer's former home on the Albert Embankment. Somerset House and Trafalgar Square round out the big landmarks.

Outside London, the opening action moves to Paris's Hôtel Plaza Athénée on avenue Montaigne, with some interiors cheated at the Four Seasons at Tower Bridge. Episode four retreats to Nazzano, a small Italian town 30 miles north of Rome, where Sam holes up near the 13th-century castle and drinks at a bar on via Dante Alighieri. The episode five climax unfolds at Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire, a Robert Adam-redesigned stately home with a screen CV running from Four Weddings and a Funeral to Bond, now operating as a hotel, golf and spa resort. Buckinghamshire's Wormsley Park Estate, once Sir Paul Getty's, plays the Dorset Downs.

For travellers, this is essentially a ready-made London itinerary with side trips. You can sleep at the Rosewood, eat at the chippy, drink where Sam drinks, and finish at Luton Hoo — all without a fake passport.