@Silhouette Man next Tuesday's episode is about Ian Fleming. So... we will see.
The first episode ran quickly over Erskine Childers and Somerset Maughan, which was decent, before going onto John Buchan. A quick skip over Dennis Wheatley, who may crop up in the Fleming episode.
The second was a Le Carre fest, which is odd as he comes after Fleming, his anti-spy novels the antithesis of Bond. No mention of Victor Canning, although he is more an adventure thriller writer I suppose. A bit more appreciation of MacLean would have been nice.
Thanks, @chrisno1. I'll hopefully remember to tune in on Tuesday then. I get the impression they are just focusing on the biggest names in spy fiction so I doubt that the likes of John Gardner or James Leasor will get a mention. It does sound like it will be an interesting episode though.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
SPYMASTERS last night dovetailed back to John Le Carre despite trying to be about Ian Fleming. The thread of the documentary series seems to be not so much what these author's wrote as how their backgrounds and upbringing shaped their literary output. This is all very well until you realise [as I did] that this just means you are not giving them any credit for being creative, only for being observant, and [whisper it] a trifle maudlin and depressive. Still too much focus on the cinematic Bond - especially Craig and some stuff about Q which baffled me a,ost all their shrared output is cinematic not literary. Yawn.
I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on Monday night, again, which - fuelled by this doc series - seemed a reflection on Le Carre's family life, all that sexual betrayal and hurting those you love. I wouldn't have noted that had it not been for this series. Not sure I wanted to note it though.
A sort-of half-interesting documentary series on how contemprary espionage / warfare / politics has shaped spy writing from the turn of the 20th Century through the golden era fifties & sixties to the present day. But it is really nothing, I repeat, NOTHING to do with the great spy writers of literature.
This episode started with yet another extract from Tinker Tailor reminding us how bleak Le Carre is. Throughout the episode Le Carre and Graham Greene are the go-to authors of reference.
Then we are into the film The Lives of Others - note a FILM not a BOOK.
No writing there then.
Then we get a discussion on the 2010s and the rise of AI in intelligence gathering, including Putin's opinions on NATO and the Cold War, comparing the situation between Russia and Ukraine to that of Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece.
Another batch of modern films like Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are mentioned. None have any basis in literature.
Then we are onto spoof spies, like Austin Powers. Still no books.
Len Deighton gets a mention, because he doesn't spoof anything, but they read an extract from SS-GB, a dystopian spy novel not one set in his contemporary time.
Finally they make it to Ipcress, but reference Palmer the film character, not the book's. Helen MacInnes is mentioned, which is a decent shout. She is then promptly forgotten, except by one commentator who says MacInnes was the authentic voice of espionage during the Cold War because she deals with women and women made up the vast majority of secret service personel - she identified that Bletchley Park [pre-Cold War] was staffed by 75% female operatives. Apparently these women are the real james Bonds. Erm, well as James Bond isn't real, that's a point which has no point of comparison.
Bond's dolly birds have now become all-action heroines. MOVIES AGAIN.
There was some neat dovetailing to Mark Herron, Aya de Leon and Sam Greenlee as well as Ludlum and Charles Beaumont - but none of these are authors from the supposed Golden Age of Spy Fiction the series advertised it was focussing on. All were supported by film clips.
The narrator - who also authored the thing - returned to Ukraine and the old Cold War as a benchmark for the future. No mention of LITERATURE in the summation at all.
A well-informed but badly executed series that probably had only 20% to do with writers and writing.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,885Chief of Staff
Watched the first series of Plur1bus - a brilliant take on humans being affected by a virus…highly recommended 👍🏻
Then steamed right into Serverence…smashed the first series and halfway through the second now…it’s very difficult to not just stay up and watch the whole thing right through 😳
All set up for a sequel. The end was silly. Too violent. I guessed the villain in episode one; they did manage to deceive me towards the end, but the reveal wasn't a surprise.
It seems like a lot of channels here in the states are replaying certain old shows just to annoy me. The ones that I’m most sick of are MASH, Friends and The Big Bang Theory. I see them run for hours and it makes me mad. They are the main reason (along with creative censorship for movies) that I will never go back to basic cable again. I understand that the three I mentioned are sitcom classics, but it’s just tiring to see the same shows and the same episodes over and over. I know that they are far from the only shows that are treated this way. However, they do seem to creep into my life over and over again. Does anyone else have shows that this way? Sorry for the rant, I just can’t get rid of them!
UK viewers might want to know that the one-off 1980 drama Caught on a Train is on BBC4 tonight (Wed 6 May). It has Bond star Michael Kitchen in an early role, and according to the Times, would have starred Lotte 'Klebb' Lenya had she not baulked at the low fee offered by the BBC. So instead it went to the star of another spy thriller (okay, that's pushing it a bit), The 39 Steps - Peggy Ashcroft.
Stephen King’s novel is pretty faithfully transferred into this 8-episode series. There are some changes, the Institute (where ghastly experiments are being done on kids with telekinesis and telepathic powers) is placed close to nightknocker Tim, whose role is greatly expanded from the book. Some of the kids are older than in the book which kind of makes sense, acting wise. But all-in-all this is a very acceptable version of the book. King is an executive producer so the changes will have met his approval.
There is a major change at the end as a second series has been ordered, so the ending is left more open. I think this is unnecessary and would have preferred to go with ending the whole story, as in the book.
I would recommend reading the book first.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Possibly more of the same, but on Tuesday 12 May (the summer's coming on fast, isn't it) Sky Arts is showing Ian Fleming: The Curse of Bond - The Spy Who Killed Me at 9pm.
It is followed by a repeat of Sean Connery vs James Bond at 10.45pm.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 9,317MI6 Agent
That Fleming programme sounds intriguing. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, @Napoleon Plural. And, yes, the year is really flying past!
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,885Chief of Staff
Legends on Netflix.
A dramatisation of a true story…a small group of custom officials try and bring down drug gangs in London & Liverpool & Afghanistan by going undercover…well acted and well paced with a couple of decent laughs too…highly recommended.
Watched it, enjoyed it. Despite the title, basically a bio of Fleming. Dogged by the need to show a clip of a Bond movie for every quote, it was like someone had gone through the script with a marker pen adding 'this scene' in the margin, often taking from a movie or scene at least that Fleming had never penned. It got a bit distracting. Some nice talking heads, including Ralph Fiennes and writer Percival Everett, along with Fleming's {Edit: gardener, not Gardner - does autocorrect know we're Bond fans?) (obv the gardener getting on a bit now).
Some bits of info I didn't know - or at least, hadn't filled it in. After Suez, Eden resigned supposedly due to ill health and went to recuperate at Fleming's house in Jamaica, Goldeneye. Pictures of him on a sun lounger. Made it clear how ironic this was, given that Suez as the British Empire's last hurrah and Bond was created to commemorate the end of Empire; if we couldn't do it on the battlefield, there was always intelligence/spying. Ironic too given we now know of the outrageous double cross of Philby and Blunt et al.
The women are criticised as being ciphers but I don't know. Most readers could differentiate between Pussy Galore and Honeychile Ryder, Solitaire and Gala Brand, Tiffany Case and Kissy, Vesper and Tracy etc You might as well argue the villains are ciphers too, and Bond has been described as one, also. Some defenders said in the doc that at least in the books they were independent women generally doing their own thing in contrast to 1950s women who were back to the kitchen and couldn't even buy a car without their husband's permission or have a bank account.
Clips were films by Connery, Moore, Craig and latterly Lazenby to illustrate Bond's marriage; Miss Hoity Toity Diana Rigg's interview explaining how Bond was very sexist and only gets married so she can be killed off does underline that slight feeling I get from OHMSS that Rigg isn't always quite sympathetic to her role. No clips from Dalton or Brosnan's films.
Nor any mention of the Thunderball case which is said to have accelerated Fleming's ill health. They did go on about how he had physically fallen off and looked rough - really he didn't look so bad for his 50s, I mean most folk do tail off a bit in later life. Given he'd lived through the war you can see why dying from too much drinking and smoking still counts pretty much as going out on your own terms. Still, this wasn't a bad whistlestop tour of Fleming's life.
I watched it too, @Napoleon Plural , so also thnaks for raising awareness. Not much that was genuinely new, but it was interesting all the same and they picked out some decent examples of his prose as well as some intimate letters to and from lovers, so it gave a decent view of Fleming's artistic skills. As regards a Bond curse, well, they didn't really treat the subject in that manner. A few lines about the pressure to keep laying the golden egg and that was about it. They concentrated more on his smoking and drinking, with a little empathy, I thought, but didn't seem to want to discuss the Thunderball court hearings, maybe in case they got libelled or something. I wonder if Fleming did really believe that his greatest achievemnt would be to be Captain of Royal St George's Golf Club, or if he was merely joking at the journalist's expense. Remembering some of @Revelator's interview copies, I got the impression Fleming disparaged his career and would ahve done whether he was successful or not.
Overall, this documentary was more what I thought the recent Spymasters series was going to be like, concentrating on the author and his background and how it affected the writings, rather than placing the author in a historical context and weaving social and political commentary around his 'era'.
I’ve been watching some episodes of Airline on YouTube which shows the operations of the Easy Jet airline. I really don’t know how the staff keep their cool with some of the entitled, arrogant creatures they encounter. I’m glad I was self employed as I wouldn’t last long working for Easy Jet 🤣
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The Cage has been interesting although I don't believe the writers spent much time researching how a casino operates. There are also too many narrative blind spots. It doesn't help the thieving enterprise would be easily spotted and the money laundering scam would not work effectively, at least not to the degree suggested here. The whole point of calling the thing 'The Cage' suggests the gear is offloaded thru the money cage [the casino's 'bank'] but it isnt. The writers missed a decent blackmail trick there. Still, good performances and quite watchable.
"Legends" on Netflix. Tells the true story of how undercover customs officers infiltrated the drug gangs of London and Liverpool with much less training and resources than the Police or Intelligence Services
A really, really good watch - very well acted and kept me engrossed all the way through
Thoroughly recommended
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 9,317MI6 Agent
edited May 20
Here's a review of the recent Ian Fleming programme from Times Online:
Ian Fleming and the Curse of James Bond review — did 007 kill his creator?
For anyone who loves the world’s most famous, this alluring TV documentary is a must-watch about his enduring appeal and whether it pushed his author to the limit
James Jackson, TV Editor
Tuesday May 12 2026, 9.00pm, The Times
Watch Ian Fleming and the Curse of James Bond (Sky Arts) — for anyone who loves Bond it’s a must — and it’s clear that when it comes to cosmopolitan cool, still no one does it better. See Sean Connery’s Bond laconically order down his hotel room telephone, “Green figs. Yoghurt. Coffee, very black,” and you don’t just immediately want to imitate him saying it, you want to book a trip to Istanbul and order that very breakfast.
While others struggle with the impossible task of dreaming up a way for Bond to be relevant in the 2020s, this alluring documentary reminds you of several things: why you loved the character in the first place; why, in a way, he was the spy who killed his creator; and why Jamaica was such a part of 007.
As much as Bond evokes Mayfair gentlemen’s clubs and Côte d’Azur casinos, there’s a heady Caribbean flavour running through the stories: “Crab Key” in Dr No, “San Monique” in Live and Let Die, the Bahamas in Thunderball. The exotic heat and a languid kind of danger are part of Bond at his most captivating. Fleming famously named the spy after the author of Birds of the West Indies on his bookshelf, then wrote all the novels from his Goldeneye retreat on Oracabessa Bay — 12 books (and two short-story collections) in 13 years, which fair broke him. His hero became his villain, the stress of feeding demand for more Bond devouring him.
That’s the melancholic theory of Adam Low’s film (hence the title), a biography full of diverting insights, not just from such high-calibre contributors as Ralph Fiennes and William Boyd but also Fleming’s own family. Even his gardener, who reveals the author’s love of the local sea urchin dish and how he used to feed the octopus on his reef with conches (this was not long before he wrote Octopussy).
The readings by Helena Bonham Carter that punctuate the film show that Fleming was not wanting for descriptive imagination. Take this extract from Live and Let Die, where on Bond’s underwater journey to the villain’s lair the reef’s hostility presages the destination: “Anemones with crimson centres waved their velvet tentacles at him, a colony of black sea-eggs moved their toledo-steel spines in sudden alarm and a hairy sea-centipede halted in its hundred strides and questioned with its eyeless head.”
If Fleming’s natural home was Boodle’s in St James’s and the Royal St George’s Golf Club in Kent, Fifties Jamaica was this man of empire’s love affair — a paradisal contrast to Labour austerity back in Britain and a place that was “in some ways, colonialism’s last stand”, as the author Marlon James puts it here. 007’s world was one of old certainties — Bond’s Britain for ever the senior partner to Felix Leiter’s America — and as such consoled its creator as much as the pressures of writing about it exhausted him.
In his later years Fleming at last found fame yet the author described it as nothing more than “ashes, dear boy, ashes”. Stress contributed to his death at 56 from a heart attack (although probably more so his 70-a-day smoking habit). Yet the curse took another victim in his only son, Caspar, who, deeply affected by his father’s death on his 12th birthday, killed himself 11 years later.
It’s a tragic note for the film to end on, though it doesn’t detract from this being an intoxicating immersion in Fleming flavours. A world not just of spies, sex and danger, but of tropical humidity, bird-watching books and sundowners as Noël Coward’sSail Away plays on the gramophone.
★★★★☆
Available on Sky/Now
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
That's a decent review, although as always references the films [e.g. San Monique] not the books. He was winning me over until he suggested Fleming's writing was influenced ny Labour austerity. Not a single one of Fleming's novels were written during a Labour government's term in office. This kind of poor research from a professional writer just irks me.
I’ve written on these boards many times about so called “professional critics” who just haven’t a clue. Makes you wonder what the editors do to earn their keep.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Yes, all the Prime Ministers during the time of Fleming's novels were Tories: Winston Churchill (1951-55), Anthony Eden (1955-57), Harold Macmillan (1957-63), and Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64).
Perhaps the reviewer was trying to say that Bond's creation was inspired by the postwar period of rationing under Labor's Clement Attlee (1946-51), but classifying that era as one of "austerity" would be incorrect, since the government, far from cutting back services, did the opposite and established the modern British welfare state, allowing the nation to recover from wartime privation and paving the way for the boom of the '60s.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 9,317MI6 Agent
Yes, and if they make mistakes about something as ultimately trivial (in the grand scheme of things) as Ian Fleming and James Bond in national newspapers it makes you wonder what else they get wrong about more "important" matters. Quite a lot I would suppose...
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
This is a police series where Nolan (Natan Fillion) joins the LAPD in spite of being in his 40's. Fillion is always very watchable, and the series has a good group of interesting characters. There are usually several storylines for each episode. This series is at its best when it focuses on weird and different case s and situations and interesting characters. Unfortunately the later seasons falls for the temptation to go big. It gets riddicolous how many serial killers this small group of officers gets involvert with! I hope the series goes back to basis and focuses on cases on a believable scale and making them strange and unique. Generally theseroes is very entertaining.
Comments
@Silhouette Man next Tuesday's episode is about Ian Fleming. So... we will see.
The first episode ran quickly over Erskine Childers and Somerset Maughan, which was decent, before going onto John Buchan. A quick skip over Dennis Wheatley, who may crop up in the Fleming episode.
The second was a Le Carre fest, which is odd as he comes after Fleming, his anti-spy novels the antithesis of Bond. No mention of Victor Canning, although he is more an adventure thriller writer I suppose. A bit more appreciation of MacLean would have been nice.
Also no mention of American spy fiction.
Great to see you on here again TP, don’t be a stranger, your presence is missed on these boards.
I’d forgotten Paul Ritter was in QOS, I never revisit it but will in a few weeks time when it’s due on the weekly Bond watch.
Thanks, @chrisno1. I'll hopefully remember to tune in on Tuesday then. I get the impression they are just focusing on the biggest names in spy fiction so I doubt that the likes of John Gardner or James Leasor will get a mention. It does sound like it will be an interesting episode though.
SPYMASTERS last night dovetailed back to John Le Carre despite trying to be about Ian Fleming. The thread of the documentary series seems to be not so much what these author's wrote as how their backgrounds and upbringing shaped their literary output. This is all very well until you realise [as I did] that this just means you are not giving them any credit for being creative, only for being observant, and [whisper it] a trifle maudlin and depressive. Still too much focus on the cinematic Bond - especially Craig and some stuff about Q which baffled me a,ost all their shrared output is cinematic not literary. Yawn.
I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on Monday night, again, which - fuelled by this doc series - seemed a reflection on Le Carre's family life, all that sexual betrayal and hurting those you love. I wouldn't have noted that had it not been for this series. Not sure I wanted to note it though.
SPYMASTERS concluded.
A sort-of half-interesting documentary series on how contemprary espionage / warfare / politics has shaped spy writing from the turn of the 20th Century through the golden era fifties & sixties to the present day. But it is really nothing, I repeat, NOTHING to do with the great spy writers of literature.
This episode started with yet another extract from Tinker Tailor reminding us how bleak Le Carre is. Throughout the episode Le Carre and Graham Greene are the go-to authors of reference.
Then we are into the film The Lives of Others - note a FILM not a BOOK.
No writing there then.
Then we get a discussion on the 2010s and the rise of AI in intelligence gathering, including Putin's opinions on NATO and the Cold War, comparing the situation between Russia and Ukraine to that of Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece.
Another batch of modern films like Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are mentioned. None have any basis in literature.
Then we are onto spoof spies, like Austin Powers. Still no books.
Len Deighton gets a mention, because he doesn't spoof anything, but they read an extract from SS-GB, a dystopian spy novel not one set in his contemporary time.
Finally they make it to Ipcress, but reference Palmer the film character, not the book's. Helen MacInnes is mentioned, which is a decent shout. She is then promptly forgotten, except by one commentator who says MacInnes was the authentic voice of espionage during the Cold War because she deals with women and women made up the vast majority of secret service personel - she identified that Bletchley Park [pre-Cold War] was staffed by 75% female operatives. Apparently these women are the real james Bonds. Erm, well as James Bond isn't real, that's a point which has no point of comparison.
Bond's dolly birds have now become all-action heroines. MOVIES AGAIN.
There was some neat dovetailing to Mark Herron, Aya de Leon and Sam Greenlee as well as Ludlum and Charles Beaumont - but none of these are authors from the supposed Golden Age of Spy Fiction the series advertised it was focussing on. All were supported by film clips.
The narrator - who also authored the thing - returned to Ukraine and the old Cold War as a benchmark for the future. No mention of LITERATURE in the summation at all.
A well-informed but badly executed series that probably had only 20% to do with writers and writing.
Watched the first series of Plur1bus - a brilliant take on humans being affected by a virus…highly recommended 👍🏻
Then steamed right into Serverence…smashed the first series and halfway through the second now…it’s very difficult to not just stay up and watch the whole thing right through 😳
All set up for a sequel. The end was silly. Too violent. I guessed the villain in episode one; they did manage to deceive me towards the end, but the reveal wasn't a surprise.
There's that spy thriller called Secret Service or something imaginative on tonight's TV at 9pm, it stars Gemma Artherton. Might be worth a watch.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
It was alright.
It seems like a lot of channels here in the states are replaying certain old shows just to annoy me. The ones that I’m most sick of are MASH, Friends and The Big Bang Theory. I see them run for hours and it makes me mad. They are the main reason (along with creative censorship for movies) that I will never go back to basic cable again. I understand that the three I mentioned are sitcom classics, but it’s just tiring to see the same shows and the same episodes over and over. I know that they are far from the only shows that are treated this way. However, they do seem to creep into my life over and over again. Does anyone else have shows that this way? Sorry for the rant, I just can’t get rid of them!
You are not alone @DrMaxMGold they repaeat MASH, Friends, The Big Bang Theory endlessly in the UK too.
And I'm happy to say I've never watched any of them.
You are definitely missing out by not seeing M*A*S*H - but it’s time has probably passed for you now .
Yes, I'd say you're right. As an older show I'm sure it's better than those other two.
UK viewers might want to know that the one-off 1980 drama Caught on a Train is on BBC4 tonight (Wed 6 May). It has Bond star Michael Kitchen in an early role, and according to the Times, would have starred Lotte 'Klebb' Lenya had she not baulked at the low fee offered by the BBC. So instead it went to the star of another spy thriller (okay, that's pushing it a bit), The 39 Steps - Peggy Ashcroft.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE INSTITUTE (2025)
Stephen King’s novel is pretty faithfully transferred into this 8-episode series. There are some changes, the Institute (where ghastly experiments are being done on kids with telekinesis and telepathic powers) is placed close to nightknocker Tim, whose role is greatly expanded from the book. Some of the kids are older than in the book which kind of makes sense, acting wise. But all-in-all this is a very acceptable version of the book. King is an executive producer so the changes will have met his approval.
There is a major change at the end as a second series has been ordered, so the ending is left more open. I think this is unnecessary and would have preferred to go with ending the whole story, as in the book.
I would recommend reading the book first.
Possibly more of the same, but on Tuesday 12 May (the summer's coming on fast, isn't it) Sky Arts is showing Ian Fleming: The Curse of Bond - The Spy Who Killed Me at 9pm.
It is followed by a repeat of Sean Connery vs James Bond at 10.45pm.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That Fleming programme sounds intriguing. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, @Napoleon Plural. And, yes, the year is really flying past!
Legends on Netflix.
A dramatisation of a true story…a small group of custom officials try and bring down drug gangs in London & Liverpool & Afghanistan by going undercover…well acted and well paced with a couple of decent laughs too…highly recommended.
Watched it, enjoyed it. Despite the title, basically a bio of Fleming. Dogged by the need to show a clip of a Bond movie for every quote, it was like someone had gone through the script with a marker pen adding 'this scene' in the margin, often taking from a movie or scene at least that Fleming had never penned. It got a bit distracting. Some nice talking heads, including Ralph Fiennes and writer Percival Everett, along with Fleming's {Edit: gardener, not Gardner - does autocorrect know we're Bond fans?) (obv the gardener getting on a bit now).
Some bits of info I didn't know - or at least, hadn't filled it in. After Suez, Eden resigned supposedly due to ill health and went to recuperate at Fleming's house in Jamaica, Goldeneye. Pictures of him on a sun lounger. Made it clear how ironic this was, given that Suez as the British Empire's last hurrah and Bond was created to commemorate the end of Empire; if we couldn't do it on the battlefield, there was always intelligence/spying. Ironic too given we now know of the outrageous double cross of Philby and Blunt et al.
The women are criticised as being ciphers but I don't know. Most readers could differentiate between Pussy Galore and Honeychile Ryder, Solitaire and Gala Brand, Tiffany Case and Kissy, Vesper and Tracy etc You might as well argue the villains are ciphers too, and Bond has been described as one, also. Some defenders said in the doc that at least in the books they were independent women generally doing their own thing in contrast to 1950s women who were back to the kitchen and couldn't even buy a car without their husband's permission or have a bank account.
Clips were films by Connery, Moore, Craig and latterly Lazenby to illustrate Bond's marriage; Miss Hoity Toity Diana Rigg's interview explaining how Bond was very sexist and only gets married so she can be killed off does underline that slight feeling I get from OHMSS that Rigg isn't always quite sympathetic to her role. No clips from Dalton or Brosnan's films.
Nor any mention of the Thunderball case which is said to have accelerated Fleming's ill health. They did go on about how he had physically fallen off and looked rough - really he didn't look so bad for his 50s, I mean most folk do tail off a bit in later life. Given he'd lived through the war you can see why dying from too much drinking and smoking still counts pretty much as going out on your own terms. Still, this wasn't a bad whistlestop tour of Fleming's life.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I watched it too, @Napoleon Plural , so also thnaks for raising awareness. Not much that was genuinely new, but it was interesting all the same and they picked out some decent examples of his prose as well as some intimate letters to and from lovers, so it gave a decent view of Fleming's artistic skills. As regards a Bond curse, well, they didn't really treat the subject in that manner. A few lines about the pressure to keep laying the golden egg and that was about it. They concentrated more on his smoking and drinking, with a little empathy, I thought, but didn't seem to want to discuss the Thunderball court hearings, maybe in case they got libelled or something. I wonder if Fleming did really believe that his greatest achievemnt would be to be Captain of Royal St George's Golf Club, or if he was merely joking at the journalist's expense. Remembering some of @Revelator's interview copies, I got the impression Fleming disparaged his career and would ahve done whether he was successful or not.
Overall, this documentary was more what I thought the recent Spymasters series was going to be like, concentrating on the author and his background and how it affected the writings, rather than placing the author in a historical context and weaving social and political commentary around his 'era'.
I’ve been watching some episodes of Airline on YouTube which shows the operations of the Easy Jet airline. I really don’t know how the staff keep their cool with some of the entitled, arrogant creatures they encounter. I’m glad I was self employed as I wouldn’t last long working for Easy Jet 🤣
The Cage has been interesting although I don't believe the writers spent much time researching how a casino operates. There are also too many narrative blind spots. It doesn't help the thieving enterprise would be easily spotted and the money laundering scam would not work effectively, at least not to the degree suggested here. The whole point of calling the thing 'The Cage' suggests the gear is offloaded thru the money cage [the casino's 'bank'] but it isnt. The writers missed a decent blackmail trick there. Still, good performances and quite watchable.
"Legends" on Netflix. Tells the true story of how undercover customs officers infiltrated the drug gangs of London and Liverpool with much less training and resources than the Police or Intelligence Services
A really, really good watch - very well acted and kept me engrossed all the way through
Thoroughly recommended
Here's a review of the recent Ian Fleming programme from Times Online:
Ian Fleming and the Curse of James Bond review — did 007 kill his creator?
For anyone who loves the world’s most famous, this alluring TV documentary is a must-watch about his enduring appeal and whether it pushed his author to the limit
James Jackson, TV Editor
Tuesday May 12 2026, 9.00pm, The Times
Watch Ian Fleming and the Curse of James Bond (Sky Arts) — for anyone who loves Bond it’s a must — and it’s clear that when it comes to cosmopolitan cool, still no one does it better. See Sean Connery’s Bond laconically order down his hotel room telephone, “Green figs. Yoghurt. Coffee, very black,” and you don’t just immediately want to imitate him saying it, you want to book a trip to Istanbul and order that very breakfast.
While others struggle with the impossible task of dreaming up a way for Bond to be relevant in the 2020s, this alluring documentary reminds you of several things: why you loved the character in the first place; why, in a way, he was the spy who killed his creator; and why Jamaica was such a part of 007.
As much as Bond evokes Mayfair gentlemen’s clubs and Côte d’Azur casinos, there’s a heady Caribbean flavour running through the stories: “Crab Key” in Dr No, “San Monique” in Live and Let Die, the Bahamas in Thunderball. The exotic heat and a languid kind of danger are part of Bond at his most captivating. Fleming famously named the spy after the author of Birds of the West Indies on his bookshelf, then wrote all the novels from his Goldeneye retreat on Oracabessa Bay — 12 books (and two short-story collections) in 13 years, which fair broke him. His hero became his villain, the stress of feeding demand for more Bond devouring him.
That’s the melancholic theory of Adam Low’s film (hence the title), a biography full of diverting insights, not just from such high-calibre contributors as Ralph Fiennes and William Boyd but also Fleming’s own family. Even his gardener, who reveals the author’s love of the local sea urchin dish and how he used to feed the octopus on his reef with conches (this was not long before he wrote Octopussy).
The readings by Helena Bonham Carter that punctuate the film show that Fleming was not wanting for descriptive imagination. Take this extract from Live and Let Die, where on Bond’s underwater journey to the villain’s lair the reef’s hostility presages the destination: “Anemones with crimson centres waved their velvet tentacles at him, a colony of black sea-eggs moved their toledo-steel spines in sudden alarm and a hairy sea-centipede halted in its hundred strides and questioned with its eyeless head.”
If Fleming’s natural home was Boodle’s in St James’s and the Royal St George’s Golf Club in Kent, Fifties Jamaica was this man of empire’s love affair — a paradisal contrast to Labour austerity back in Britain and a place that was “in some ways, colonialism’s last stand”, as the author Marlon James puts it here. 007’s world was one of old certainties — Bond’s Britain for ever the senior partner to Felix Leiter’s America — and as such consoled its creator as much as the pressures of writing about it exhausted him.
In his later years Fleming at last found fame yet the author described it as nothing more than “ashes, dear boy, ashes”. Stress contributed to his death at 56 from a heart attack (although probably more so his 70-a-day smoking habit). Yet the curse took another victim in his only son, Caspar, who, deeply affected by his father’s death on his 12th birthday, killed himself 11 years later.
It’s a tragic note for the film to end on, though it doesn’t detract from this being an intoxicating immersion in Fleming flavours. A world not just of spies, sex and danger, but of tropical humidity, bird-watching books and sundowners as Noël Coward’s Sail Away plays on the gramophone.
★★★★☆
Available on Sky/Now
That's a decent review, although as always references the films [e.g. San Monique] not the books. He was winning me over until he suggested Fleming's writing was influenced ny Labour austerity. Not a single one of Fleming's novels were written during a Labour government's term in office. This kind of poor research from a professional writer just irks me.
I’ve written on these boards many times about so called “professional critics” who just haven’t a clue. Makes you wonder what the editors do to earn their keep.
Yes, all the Prime Ministers during the time of Fleming's novels were Tories: Winston Churchill (1951-55), Anthony Eden (1955-57), Harold Macmillan (1957-63), and Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64).
Perhaps the reviewer was trying to say that Bond's creation was inspired by the postwar period of rationing under Labor's Clement Attlee (1946-51), but classifying that era as one of "austerity" would be incorrect, since the government, far from cutting back services, did the opposite and established the modern British welfare state, allowing the nation to recover from wartime privation and paving the way for the boom of the '60s.
Yes, and if they make mistakes about something as ultimately trivial (in the grand scheme of things) as Ian Fleming and James Bond in national newspapers it makes you wonder what else they get wrong about more "important" matters. Quite a lot I would suppose...
The Recruit
This is a police series where Nolan (Natan Fillion) joins the LAPD in spite of being in his 40's. Fillion is always very watchable, and the series has a good group of interesting characters. There are usually several storylines for each episode. This series is at its best when it focuses on weird and different case s and situations and interesting characters. Unfortunately the later seasons falls for the temptation to go big. It gets riddicolous how many serial killers this small group of officers gets involvert with! I hope the series goes back to basis and focuses on cases on a believable scale and making them strange and unique. Generally theseroes is very entertaining.