Looking for Mr Bond: 007 at the BBC

This is an enjoyable look back at the BBC archives of all things Bond.

Ian Fleming talks about his literary creation as he was interviewed for Desert Island Discs. John Le Carre criticised the character of Bond as a fantasy.

The interviews of the various actors who played 007 are shown whether they were talking to Barry Norman, Terry Wogan or Jonathan Ross. Connery was very playful with the press in his early days. Roger Moore had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

Pierce Brosnan was loss for words for his first major interview after he was unveiled to the press. Daniel Craig tries to put the furore behind him that he is too blond to be Bond. Timothy Dalton always felt uncomfortable in interviews. Here is a surprise. Out of all the Bond actors, Dalton has made the highest grossing non-Bond film with his turn in Toy Story 3.

It was interesting to see a long haired and bearded George Lazenby talking critically about his one shot as Bond in OHMSS and being unhappy with the director and the direction the films were moving into. Even Diana Rigg was critical on the film set of OHMSS about how women were portrayed in Bond.

Roald Dahl pops up to talk about adapting a Bond film and you see the larger than life Cubby Broccoli as he goes about making the Bond movies.

When I was a lad it was always ITV who showed the royal premieres of the EON Bond films taking place in the west end. When the unofficial Never Say Never Again was premiered, it was the BBC who stepped in.

There were some surprises. An Open University course went in conjunction with the making of The Spy Who Loved Me. Roger Moore once turned up in a skit playing 007 a decade before he bagged the role.

A fun and frothy look and it was nice to see some interviews that I remembered from some decades ago.

This is a fantastic look back at all the Bonds and gives us some context as to watch each actor brought to the role. Great interviews and old footage from news and tabloids. Narrated well, too. Really enjoyable and made me want to rewatch the old movies.

007 AT THE BBC tells the story of James Bond on screen with the help of material from the archives. Beginning in the early Sixties with a DESERT ISLAND DISCS program featuring Ian Fleming, and interviews with Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, this TIMESHIFT documentary traces the evolution of the Bond character from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, featuring interviews with all the Bonds in between.

Some of the material is fascinatingly quaint - for example, a clip featuring columnist and wit Patrick Campbell fulminating against the banality of the Bond films' content, or Roger Moore in pre-Bond days appearing as a guest star in a skit on the character. The interviews are mostly predictable showbiz stuff, with Sheridan Morley, Bob Langley and Barry Norman asking the questions.

Perhaps the most fascinating material comes from an eight-part series broadcast for the Open University in the Seventies, which looks at all aspects of producing a Bond film from financing to set- design, and contains interviews with other creative workers apart from the stars such as Lewis Gilbert and set designer Ken Adam. Through such material we are made aware of how increasingly elaborate the Bond films became, as the producers tried to offer more and more visual excitement.

We also learn how the Bond films changed with the introduction of tongue-in-cheek humor during the Roger Moore years, contrasted with the more down-to-earth reading of the character when Daniel Craig took over the role.

Illustrated with plenty of clips from the Bond cycle of films, this documentary offered an ideal introduction into the changing nature of Bond representations over the last fifty-five years.