Quick answer: Black Doves Season 2 uses Olly Murs’ 2011 pop hit “Dance with Me Tonight” during the fifth episode’s violent action, turning a familiar, upbeat party song into one of the show’s sharpest tonal jokes. The choice is not random: creator Joe Barton has explained that the track grew out of a family memory, which makes its collision with the series’ lethal world even more revealing.
Spoiler note: This article discusses the music and action in Season 2, Episode 5, “Murder Mix.”
Which Olly Murs song plays in Black Doves Season 2?
The song is “Dance with Me Tonight” by Olly Murs. It appears in Episode 5, titled “Murder Mix,” as the season’s playlist conversation gives way to a burst of action. Scene-by-scene soundtrack listings place the track at roughly the 31-minute mark; the exact timestamp can vary with platform presentation and playback versions. The episode itself follows Helen as she brings Sam, Williams and Eleanor into a dangerous rescue operation while Kestrel’s influence closes in.
The needle drop is striking because the song carries a sunny, uncomplicated invitation to dance. The images around it belong to a very different genre: armed professionals, split-second decisions and people trying to get out alive. The contrast is the joke, but it is also the point. Black Doves has always treated violence as part of the characters’ working day, then punctured that danger with ordinary conversation, pop-culture references and unexpectedly domestic details.
Why put a cheerful pop hit against a violent sequence?
Most action soundtracks tell viewers how to feel. A pounding score signals danger; a dark electronic pulse promises menace; a swelling orchestral cue can make a fight feel heroic. “Dance with Me Tonight” does something less predictable. Its bright rhythm refuses to behave like conventional action music. Instead of making the sequence feel grander, it makes the violence look stranger, more absurd and, in the show’s deliberately uncomfortable way, more recognizably human.
That tonal collision is central to the series’ identity. The assassins in Black Doves are not presented as solemn machines. They argue about music, tease one another, carry private loyalties and make jokes at moments when most people would be terrified. Their banter does not erase the consequences of what they do; it shows how they have learned to live beside those consequences. A cheerful song playing over a dangerous operation makes that emotional contradiction impossible to miss.
There is also a practical storytelling advantage. The track gives the scene an instantly recognizable musical personality. Viewers do not need a character to explain that the moment is meant to be outrageous. The song itself creates the gap between what the audience hears and what the characters are doing. That gap is where the show’s dark comedy lives.
The personal story behind Joe Barton’s music choice
The most revealing detail is that the choice began somewhere far removed from a spy thriller. In an interview with Radio Times, creator Joe Barton said he had gone through a period when he and his youngest son, then eight, played the song at bath time. He described becoming so familiar with it that the routine eventually turned into a kind of musical Stockholm syndrome: he found himself liking a track he had heard over and over.
Barton said that memory came back while he was thinking about Helen and the fact that her children are around the same age as his own were at the time. He also said Olly Murs was generous and willing when the production approached him about licensing the song. The result is a personal memory repurposed as a piece of action-comedy: a tune associated with a parent trying to get a child through bath time becomes the soundtrack to a scene in which adults are trying to survive a violent mission.
That origin matters. The song is not simply an ironic selection pulled from a playlist of cheerful hits. It connects the show’s domestic and professional worlds through the writer’s own experience. Barton has repeatedly built Black Doves around that collision: Helen can be a mother, a political spouse and a highly capable operative, sometimes within the same stretch of story. The music makes the overlap audible.
“Murder Mix” is more than a funny playlist name
Episode 5’s title, “Murder Mix,” points directly to the show’s use of music as characterization. The playlist is not just background decoration. It becomes a small social ritual among people whose work is anything but normal. Their disagreements over what should play reveal taste, temperament and the peculiar intimacy of a team that has spent too much time in danger together.
The episode’s wider soundtrack helps the gag land. The track listings include music by Cain Culto, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels, Olly Murs, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. That is not a conventional action-film playlist. It moves between abrasive, melancholy, playful and soulful sounds, refusing to settle into one emotional register. The music mirrors a series that can move from a joke to a gunfight and then to a moment of genuine hurt without announcing the transition.
For the audience, “Dance with Me Tonight” becomes the memorable payoff because it is so recognizably different from the violence on screen. But the track works best as part of the whole mix. It is one more clue that these characters are not trying to behave like polished cinematic spies. They are an odd, argumentative group of people who have built a strange kind of family around dangerous work.
Why the song changes how the action feels
There is a difference between making violence look cool and making violence look ridiculous. Black Doves often chooses the second route, without pretending that the danger is harmless. A pop song can make a sequence feel breezy on the surface, but the audience still understands what is at stake. That tension is more interesting than a straightforward heroic cue because it asks viewers to hold two reactions at once: amusement at the audacity of the music choice and discomfort at the reality of the action.
The choice also says something about Helen’s world. Her work is not neatly separated from the rhythms of family life. The song’s origin in a parent-child routine makes the contrast sharper: the same music that once accompanied an ordinary domestic task now accompanies a mission in which people may be injured or killed. That does not mean the series is saying violence is trivial. It is showing how its characters normalize the abnormal, and how easily the ordinary can intrude on the extraordinary.
My reading is that the needle drop succeeds because it does not ask the song to become darker. It lets the song stay cheerful. The scene has to meet the music on its own terms, and that mismatch produces the dark comedy. If the track had been remixed into something ominous, the moment would have been more conventional and less revealing.
Watch Olly Murs’ original “Dance with Me Tonight” video
The official music video gives viewers the song in its original setting, far removed from the show’s spy-world chaos. It is embedded below from Olly Murs’ official YouTube artist channel.
What this needle drop tells us about Black Doves
The scene is a compact example of what makes Black Doves distinctive. Its characters are capable of frightening violence, but the series rarely treats them as untouchable action figures. They have domestic memories, awkward friendships, musical preferences and emotional blind spots. The comedy does not cancel out the danger; it makes the danger feel more unsettling because it sits so close to everyday life.
It is also a reminder that a soundtrack can do more than establish mood. A well-chosen song can reveal a creator’s memory, sharpen a character dynamic and give a sequence a point of view. “Dance with Me Tonight” works because it is not the obvious song for a kill scene. It is the song that makes the scene unmistakably Black Doves.
For more on the season’s musical choices, read our related coverage: The “Murder Mix” Playlist and the characters’ music debate, why Olly Murs, Billy Joel and Can can share one playlist, and the complete Black Doves Season 2 soundtrack guide.
Frequently asked questions
What Olly Murs song is in Black Doves Season 2?
“Dance with Me Tonight” is the Olly Murs song used in Season 2, Episode 5, “Murder Mix.”
Which episode features “Dance with Me Tonight”?
The song appears in Episode 5, titled “Murder Mix,” during an action sequence connected to the team’s dangerous rescue operation.
Why did Joe Barton choose an Olly Murs song for a violent scene?
Barton told Radio Times that the song reminded him of a period when he played it repeatedly at bath time with his young son. The family memory came back while he was thinking about Helen’s children and the way her home life intersects with her spy work.
Is “Dance with Me Tonight” part of the Black Doves Season 2 soundtrack?
Yes. It is listed among the songs featured in Episode 5, alongside tracks by artists including Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.
Where can I watch the original “Dance with Me Tonight” video?
The official music video is available on Olly Murs’ official YouTube channel and is embedded above.
Does the song play during a fight or a kill scene?
Coverage of the episode describes the song as accompanying a gunfight or shoot-out. The show uses the upbeat pop track as a deliberate contrast to the violence on screen.
Sources and further reading
- Radio Times: Black Doves soundtrack and Joe Barton’s explanation of the Olly Murs choice
- Time Out: Season 2 soundtrack and episode-by-episode tracklist
- British GQ: Season 2 review and the “Murder Mix” sequence
- Netflix Tudum: Black Doves Season 2 guide
- Olly Murs: “Dance With Me Tonight” official video
By Shivam Das
