Premium Bond with Mark Gatiss and Matthew Sweet

Hello, gentlemen. Today you will enjoy a nice Vesper Martini,

which is probably James Bond's favourite drink.

So, one double for each cocktail, of gin.

Any particular kind of gin?

A good one!

-Mother's ruin.

-Yes.

A nice, premium vodka.

-This is a good vodka.

-Yes.

5ml of Lillet.

Would you like to shake it or stir it?

-Not bothered.

-Not bothered, really.

-OK. I suppose shaken.

This is very impressive, Andre, but who are you working for really?

Where are you from, Andre?

-Romania.

-Oh.

-Oh!

We thought you were going to say SMERSH.

-That's very good.

-Very impressive, isn't it?

-Sounds good as well.

This was invented for Casino Royale, the Vesper.

-Isn't it fancy?

-Very fancy.

-There you go, gentlemen.

-One moment.

-Cheers. James Bond.

-Cheers.

BOTH: Ooh!

That's nice, isn't it?

Goes down very nicely.

So, Matthew, who, in your mind,

is the ultimate James Bond?

-I think the "premium" Bond, Mark...

-Clever.

JAMES BOND THEME PLAYS

I need another thousand.

I admire your courage, Miss...?

Trench. Sylvia Trench.

I admire your luck, Mr...?

Bond.

James Bond.

Mr Bond, I suppose you wouldn't care to...

raise the limit?

I have no objections.

'So what do we make of Connery as a figure, as a leading man?'

Looks like you're out to get me.

He doesn't look English,

he doesn't sound English

and he's very sort of highly aestheticised, too.

He seems to be wearing loads of make-up, his eyes look enormous.

He looks like lots of work has been done on him, somehow.

In a way, he's a sort of Frankenstein monster, isn't he?

He's a sum of many different parts and influences.

The producers have sort of moulded him,

they've put him into these incredible suits, Savile Row suits.

James, where on earth have you been?

I've been searching London for you.

007 is here, sir.

He'll see you in a minute.

Moneypenny.

What gives?

Me, given an ounce of encouragement.

He represents a sort of person

that everybody wants to be,

-but they're not quite sure what he is.

-Yeah.

And the fact that he is, of course,

a government employee

paid to kill people is, erm...

perhaps some part of the aspiration they didn't know they had!

Very clever, Mr Bond. But you're up against more than you know.

You shoot me, and you'll end up like Strangways.

And you killed him?

He was killed, but never mind how.

Who are you working for, Professor?

Well, you might as well know, as you won't live to use the information.

-I'm working for...

-HE FIRES

That's a Smith & Wesson.

And you've had your six.

There's a very powerful sense of how sexy it is,

and how much it's part of that persona.

You know, later Bonds would be either criticised

for doing too much or not enough.

It's having that edge which Connery always had

of looking like he could just...

Like the Incredible Hulk - he would just suddenly burst out of that.

And no matter who you were,

you might be in the line of fire.

GLASS SMASHES

There's another procedural element

that I think is there in all of those '60s films, to some extent.

In a way, it looks like something to do with spying,

but I think it's actually something else.

It's how to go to a hotel,

how to inspect the environment that we're in.

It strikes me that an audience member would've been as intoxicated

by the idea of going to a hotel

maybe where they knew you were coming, they knew you already.

There wasn't that kind of moment of embarrassment

between the person behind the desk and the person arriving,

which is the trademark of all interactions

of British people checking in to a hotel.

The ease of all of that.

-32 for Mr Bond.

-Hope you enjoy your stay.

Thank you.

JAMES BOND THEME PLAYS

BELLBOY CLEARS THROAT

Will there be anything else, sir?

Only this. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

I think it's in From Russia With Love,

where he goes into a hotel room

and he's checking it for bugs.

But I think maybe when you're watching it,

you don't realise that is quite what he's doing

until maybe he's looked behind the second or third picture.

Perhaps he's just seeing, "Is this hotel room good enough?"

The Bond theme rises.

Rather excitingly, if you like,

because he's literally just checking a hotel room

and it's the sort of music you'd associate with a chase.

-Mr Bond here.

-Yes.

-I'm afraid the room won't do.

-I'm sorry.

-The bed's too small.

The ease, perhaps, is the most sort of attractive quality

of this sort of non-English Englishman.

Because, you're absolutely right, the audience...

What you expect is that it would be something like Carry On Abroad -

if they ever actually managed to get abroad in those days

it would be a fumbling embarrassment.

But he does it with such practised skill,

American-like confidence, really,

that sort of urbanity

which you could only hope to aspire to.

But, you're right, it's shown in such exquisite detail

that it's actually part of the joy of it.

I remember being thrilled first seeing From Russia With Love -

Bond orders figs and yoghurt.

Figs and yoghurt, yeah.

Hello.

Erm, breakfast for one at nine, please.

Green figs, yoghurt.

Coffee - very black. Thank you.

There's also his bathroom activities,

which, you know, I don't think we've ever had a British hero,

a British leading man, who spent quite so much time in the bathroom.

The bathroom is central to James Bond, isn't it?

And the rituals of...

I can imagine, like Clark Gable's absence of vest

in It Happened One Night,

that it might have sort of revolutionised

male bathroom habits.

Certainly in terms of intention.

You can imagine that maybe,

for a week after seeing From Russia With Love,

lots of men in the audience thought,

"Right, I'm going to shave like this and I'm going to wear cologne,"

and then probably gone back to not washing,

and putting their string vest on.

But, again, there's something really...

for the time, very sophisticated about the idea of having such a...

a look, and such a sharpness to it.

WATER SPLASHES

Hmm.

Oh!

Forgive me.

Why do you always wear that thing?

I have a slight inferiority complex.

The reason the first three are still so good

is they're made rapidly

and they're absolutely on a roll.

Goldfinger, which I think is the best of them,

they know exactly what they're doing.

The formula has sort of slotted into place.

He wants you.

Ah, Mr Bond. Sit down, please.

Mint julep?

Traditional but satisfying.

Yes, thanks. Some ice, but not too sweet, please.

You disappoint me, Goldfinger.

You know Operation Grand Slam simply won't work.

Incidentally, Delta 9 nerve gas is fatal.

You are unusually well informed, Mr Bond.

You kill 60,000 people uselessly.

American motorists kill that many every two years!

They've got a fantastic villain with a really good plot.

It's full of wonderful things.

It's just punchy and exciting and glamorous.

Do you expect me to talk?

No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.

There is nothing you can talk to me about that I don't already know.

Everything works in Goldfinger, including Connery,

who is just...you know... He's just completely in his stride,

he's incredibly comfortable, even in a terry towelling bathing suit.

I'll get back to the office and cable M you're on the job.

-You can fill me in on the rest at dinner.

-Fine, I'll call you later.

Amazingly, Diamonds Are Forever was going to be

a sequel to Goldfinger.

# Diamonds are forever... #

I think this film has a slightly different tone

to what has come before.

There's a more pronounced sadism about it.

I think you see a streak of cruelty in Bond

that isn't quite so visible as it has been up to that moment.

Well, he always had a cruel mouth, as we know.

Diamonds is a sort of prototype Roger Moore film,

but with a nastier edge than any of the Moores had, I think.

It's a Tom Mankiewicz screenplay, very funny.

There's a wonderful interview with Connery, a rare interview,

and he, unusually, sort of says, "It's a good one, this."

He's clearly having a good time.

But it is... It's very nasty,

which can put some people off.

The opening is particularly horrible, isn't it?

He's dispatching people

with surgical knives thrown across the room

and he drowns Blofeld, seemingly,

in boiling mud.

-Yeah, yeah.

-It's gruesome.

Welcome to hell, Blofeld.

It's got that early '70s quality -

everything's gone a bit off.

The '60s have gone off.

The lapels have got wider, the ties are wider.

Bond is wearing... He wears a pink tie at one stage.

He is visibly not very fit.

There's a bit with Jill St John where he's in his pants,

he's just sort of like your dad on holiday.

I don't... I've never minded it.

I'm very impressed.

There's a lot more to you

than I had expected.

Presumably I'm the condemned man,

and obviously you're the hearty breakfast. Right?

Diamonds was the first one I ever saw at the pictures

and I think that's one of the reasons

it's still one of my favourites.

But also it's left me with many residual terrors,

particularly about being put into a coffin and burnt alive,

which I've never got over!

Very moving.

Heart-warming, Mr Wint.

A glowing tribute, Mr Kidd.

It has this...

It's sort of jet-black comedy.

But mostly Connery's having a really good time

and, actually, as a sort of farewell for him,

it's very pleasing.

PHONE RINGS

Your call to Marc-Ange Draco,

head of Draco Construction.

-Hello, Draco?

-Yes, who is it?

-Bond, James Bond.

-Thank God, James.

-Lazenby.

-Right. The other fella.

The horrible side of watching On Her Majesty's Secret Service

is that it's one of the best ones, isn't it?

So much is lavished upon it

and yet, at the centre, there's somebody who,

for all his other qualities, just isn't really an actor, is he?

Why do you persist in rescuing me, Mr Bond?

It's becoming a habit, isn't it, Contessa Teresa?

Teresa was a saint. I'm known as Tracy.

Well, Tracy, next time play it safe and stand on five.

People who want to stay alive play it safe.

Please stay alive.

At least for tonight.

Come later.

I hope it'll be worth it...

partner.

People routinely say, "If only Connery had done it."

But if the bored Connery of You Only Live Twice had done it,

it wouldn't have been the same film.

There's something just...so special about this film, I think.

It's... It's absolutely the end of the '60s.

If it was made in 1970, it wouldn't be the same -

it's just on the verge.

Lazenby looks incredible,

his ruffled shirt is not overblown,

it's not ruchey, he just looks great.

He's got all of Connery's machismo, all of his swagger,

he looks amazing.

And he was very young - he was about 29 or 30 when he did it.

And, weirdly, the absence of Connery, to me,

is what makes it so special.

What he does have -

I think that maybe something that many of the others don't have -

is a kind of balletic approach to violence.

Connery could beat people up properly,

but George Lazenby does something entirely different with his body.

When he thumps somebody, he carries through.

You know, famous, he got the part

because he broke the stuntman's nose

and they thought, "Well, he can do it."

Tracy?

Ugh!

Ah!

I'm so glad to be able to do this,

cos there's lots I want to get off my chest!

It's one of those things

that history has just been merrily rewritten about.

It was a hugely successful film.

The box-office stuff - it's all there, it was number one.

But it just, compared to some of the others, wasn't as big -

but it's become a failure, when it wasn't.

And, you know, he wasn't popular,

but I believe I'm right in saying

he did actually send back the contract to Diamonds Are Forever,

they didn't sack him. They would've carried on.

And there's another parallel universe in which he carried on

and sort of became Roger Moore, as it were.

Well, he might have become Roger Moore

-with a bit of practice, mightn't he?

-Yeah, yeah.

The end when - spoiler alert -

Mrs Bond is killed is very touching.

And he's really good, I think, in that.

As I say, a lot better than people give him credit for.

He loves me...

Instinctively.

Infuriatingly.

Intensely.

In...

In?

-In...

-In...?

-In?

-Indubitably.

First a boy and then a girl.

It's Blofeld!

Blofeld.

It's all right.

It's quite all right, really. She's having a rest.

We'll be going on soon.

There's no hurry, you see. We have all the time in the world.

He also proves that you don't need Sean Connery.

-Yeah.

-Because, whatever his shortcomings are,

-the film gets away with it as a casting gamble.

-Yeah.

So even if we are disappointed by how he sounds,

by how he's not really funny,

by the shape of his ears even,

we can say to ourselves,

well, without this one, we wouldn't be...

All the others just wouldn't exist, would they?

Broccoli, at the time, he said, "Well, there were 14 Tarzans".

That's not a very good impression of him.

But it established the form and, therefore,

if they could do it once, they could do it again.

Obviously they immediately panic and get Connery back

but, when it's clear he'll only do one more, they have to do it again.

Which brings us...

To...

-Sir Roger Moore.

-Yes.

My name's Bond.

James Bond.

I know who you are,

what you are and why you have come.

'The principal thing I remember about Live And Let Die

'when it came out'

is Bond is no longer in charge.

It's a blaxsploitation film,

they are not the brand leaders any more,

they're slightly panicking about where cinema is going

and trying to put their old-fashioned hero

onto a new form, as it were.

Good afternoon.

Bourbon and water, please.

First booth'll do.

-Tell him neat, would you?

-Huh?

-No ice.

-That's extra, man.

I remember, when I saw it last, seeing Roger in Harlem,

I was worried about him -

which is not something you ever really get with Bond before!

I thought, "My God, he's in trouble here."

This says something about the times, doesn't it, too?

That actually going to Harlem

and going to what could be a perfectly ordinary cafe

or bar or nightclub

could seem a more dangerous environment

than being in a shark pool inside a hollowed-out volcano.

Get to LA and clean it up!

I'll come out there and clean you up - and I mean that.

Is this the stupid mother that tails you uptown?

There seems to be some mistake.

-My name is...

-Names is for tombstones, baby.

Y'all take this honky out and waste him - now!

I love this film, I love it.

It turned into The Dukes Of Hazzard, really,

-at the end, doesn't it?

-Mm. Mm.

-Which I feel is...

-Well... Ha-ha!

What are you?

Some kind of Doomsday machine boy?

Well, we got a cage strong enough to hold an animal like you here.

-Captain, would you enlighten the sheriff, please?

-Yes, sir.

JW, let me have a word with you.

JW, now, this fella's from London, England.

He's an Englishman working in cooperation with our boys,

sort of secret agent.

-Secret agent?! On whose side?!

-"Secret agent?! On whose side?!"

The great Clifton James as Sheriff Waldo J Pepper.

You can track the tone of the James Bond films

-by how funny the innocent bystanders are.

-Mm.

Cos there's a period when Roger Moore is in his pomp

when he can't do anything without, like,

knocking the top off something

and revealing a canoodling couple beneath.

Or a man in a bath, or those sort of things.

Once those conventions have been re-established, though,

they're absolutely inescapable, aren't they?

The dialogue has to follow the same kind of patterns,

every death has to have a quip.

Where's Fekkesh?

Pyramids.

Argh!

What a helpful chap.

Probably the most purely enjoyable, aren't they, the ones of that run?

And Spy Who Loved Me is a massive, widescreen treat,

beautifully made, great baddie,

brilliant Barbara Bach

as Agent XXX.

It's kind of got everything, really. And it is a greatest-hits package

but it sort of reboots Bond for the '70s with massive success.

Egyptian builders.

But actually, as ever,

it's actually commerce that was the great dictator here.

Because Spy was such a phenomenal worldwide success,

then the template is absolutely iron-clad,

so that Moonraker is a companion piece

the way Thunderball is to Goldfinger.

And so what you get is the principle of Spy Who Loved Me,

but on an absolutely grandiose scale,

which is ludicrous.

-I love it.

-Well, I think the first half-hour, you go,

"Oh, they've done it again," cos it's terrific.

But then it just becomes so country-hopping

and so sort of flaccid - apart from Drax, who's wonderful, I think.

Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts

to plan an amusing death for you.

You're not a sportsman, Mr Bond.

Why did you break off the encounter with my pet python?

I discovered he had a crush on me.

It's a disappointing film, I think, for me.

Ah! Well, I don't know.

Any villain who has a master plan to kill everyone on the earth

but then repopulate it

with the dancers from Seaside Special gets my vote.

That is actually explicitly the plan!

First there was a dream.

Now there is reality.

Here, in the untainted cradle of the heavens,

will be created a new super-race.

A race of perfect physical specimens.

No, it's one of those ones where it's a great plot

and it's obviously self-indulgent.

There is a kind of madness about it, isn't there?

Which is probably most legible

in the scene where the gondola turns into a hovercraft

to the surprise of everybody.

But mainly to the surprise of a pigeon

whom the magic of editing forces into a double-take.

You say magic...

No, I think the double-taking pigeon is probably the moment

where they become the James Bond comedies for a bit.

There's a...

We should talk, really, about Roger Moore's approach,

because he always said, you know, "Sean approached it his way,

"I approached it through the door marked 'Comedy'."

And, actually, they're the two titanic bombs in that way,

because they are...

Roger Moore did the most and it was incredibly successful.

That's why he actually did it far longer than he should have done,

because people loved it.

Possibly the thing that's never really talked about much with Roger

is that he was always slightly too old.

He's older than Connery and, you know, he looks great

but he is a bit old for the part from the beginning.

-Yes.

-Which means that by the time we get to the end

he's certainly too old!

-ENGINE REVS

-Oh! Commander Bond.

Call me James.

It's five days to Alaska.

His final one was A View To A Kill.

And I used to go and see the Bond films with the rest of my family,

it was a big family tradition,

and by the time we got to A View To A Kill,

it was just me and my dad who were the last ones standing.

And I remember distinctly there's a beautiful scene

where Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee,

both dressed 30 years too young

in sort of suede bomber jackets, are creeping around.

-Blousons.

-Blousons, indeed!

-It's worse than that.

Creeping around Christopher Walken's French estate.

And my dad leant over to me and said, "If the secret service

"is in the hands of these buggers, God help us!"

And I knew the writing was on the wall for Rog.

But I watched it quite recently and I loved it.

And I thought, if you watched this film

not as a James Bond film

but as a film about an elderly man who thinks he's a secret agent,

it's absolutely charming!

-Have you been interested in thoroughbreds long?

-No, no.

As a matter of fact I had a rather dotty old aunt die

and leave me some stables,

so I thought it might be rather fun to breed and race horses.

I take it YOU ride.

I'm happiest in the saddle.

A fellow sportsman.

What about fishing?

Fly casting?

I'm neglecting my other guests.

Enjoy yourself, you'll find the young ladies stimulating company.

I'm sure they are.

Amazingly in parallel with the most modern thing you can imagine,

which is Christopher Walken as the baddie

and Grace Jones as May Day,

who are almost aggressively youthful

and sort of forward-thinking.

Something about that ridiculous disconnection

is what makes it brilliant.

May Day is terrifying - Grace Jones of course utterly terrifying -

and Bond goes to bed with her.

May Day, where have you been?

I've been waiting for you.

To take care of me, personally.

I see you're a woman of very few words.

What's there to say?

'He gets into bed, you thought, "I'm really worried about you."

'I actually think both his hips may go at this stage.

'I remember - this is something I'd forgotten -'

I remember reading an interview with him

on the set of Moonraker in Women's Weekly -

or maybe Woman, my mum's magazine.

And I was very disappointed, cos the interviewer says,

"What's your favourite part?" and he says, "The part where I go home."

And I remember being disappointed as a boy.

Now I totally understand it!

But, anyway, he kept threatening to go

and, eventually, despite the fact that the world still adored him,

he wisely packed it in.

And so they, for the first in a long time,

had to find a new one.

It's all so boring here, Margo.

There's nothing but playboys and tennis pros.

If only I could find a real man.

THUD!

I need to use your phone.

She'll call you back.

Who are you?

Bond. James Bond.

Exercise Control 007 here.

I'll report in an hour.

Won't you join me?

Better make that two.

As a Bond fan, I was so fed up

with the idea of this lethal spy

being played by a geriatric comedian -

this is by then.

I welcomed this film like rain in the desert

and I saw it three times in its opening week.

And it's got this fantastic opening on the Rock of Gibraltar,

with all these people who - unless you've read the pre-publicity -

you think might be Bond.

Yes, we get three candidates, don't we? They jump out of an aircraft.

And you don't know who's which.

And then...

They could all just be delivering chocolates to some very lucky lady.

They looked like nearly. Nearly Bonds.

And then one of them gets his rope cut and falls to his death

and then Tim Dalton turns like that -

and he looks amazing!

Argh!

And suddenly we're back.

There's a sense of him...

..almost being a human being.

Yeah. The whole idea behind Dalton's Bond is to...

is to sort of humanise him again,

take him back from being a sort of superhero.

There's a kind of much more plausible -

not entirely plausible - but much more plausible human quality to him.

He also has this brilliant thing with his tux,

-which is in both his films.

-Yes!

-It's his thing.

Turn off the lights.

'He pulls the collar across and it sort of...

'It darkens him into sort of...'

Milk Tray look - I love that.

It's a very good film.

Very good roles for the women,

and the fact that he actually does appear to really fall for her,

it's very touching.

There's some really good stuff in it.

SHE SHOUTS IN OWN LANGUAGE

What's that supposed to mean?

Back end of horse.

You calling me a horse's arse?

'It's interesting, because the women involved at times

'are highly problematic figures, and the question'

of how much we believe anything

about what goes on between them is key, I think,

because it often seems like

part of this strange, slightly kind of lifeless ritual,

going to bed, in a Bond film.

They just seem to be doing it, often, for reasons of convention.

The idea... The lust is all saved till the fight scene.

Whereas, you know, the relationship with Kara in Living Daylights,

she's a very unlikely Bond girl.

She's very beautiful, very slight,

and there's something rather touching about it.

It's much more like a sort of Hitchcock romance.

It's really affecting.

-No more.

-This one.

The Living Daylights was a massive success.

And I can still remember the clipping -

"This is the Bond for the '90s", they said.

And his performance, I think,

has been neglected, underrated, over time,

partly because of this...

the apparent relief that people seemed to find

when Pierce Brosnan came back

and did something rather more traditional and conservative

with the part.

But, for me, his northern-ness

is his ineluctably attractive quality.

Yeah. I think he's terrific.

Really, what you can say now is he's a sort of prototype Daniel Craig.

It's sort of like the world was not quite prepared for him.

Dalton registers the thousand natural shocks

that flesh is heir to.

You could have had everything.

Don't you want to know why?

Argh!

HE SCREAMS

And he also...

Anything he says sounds immediately powerful and authoritative.

His other most significant work in this period

-was doing the voiceovers for... DALTON:

-'Brain's Faggots.'

-And I think when he says.... DALTON:

-'Brain's Faggots.'

..it's just as powerful as anything he has to say in Licence To Kill.

Duck!

We've nothing to declare!

Just a cello!

But then this weird thing happens -

slight digression -

the EON Productions, the Broccolis got involved in a court case

about the TV screenings of the Bond films,

which shut down production.

And it took five, six years

to sort out this court case.

Then, when they realised they could make some more,

they did offer it to Tim Dalton, and he said no,

because he said, "That parade has passed by".

So the search is on again.

Thank you, Mr...?

My name's Bond.

James Bond.

Xenia Sergeyevna Onatopp.

Onatopp?

Onatopp.

He's a sort of Roger Connery.

He handles the physical stuff brilliantly,

he has a definite edge, but he's also...

He's got a wonderfully Irish quality

which, again, he wanted to bring to it.

He thought, well, Connery was Scottish - why not?

He has a sort of slightly more whimsical thing -

he's great with the one-liners - and they sit quite well, I think.

Beg your pardon - forgot to knock.

Over his four films,

it never quite gels, I think, for me,

because it's always slightly not one thing or the other -

he doesn't become his own man.

It is, in many ways, designed by a committee.

They give him his Aston Martin back.

They give him the popularity of Moore's quips,

they make it slightly sillier again.

But then Tomorrow Never Dies and...

The World Is Not Enough. You see, they sound like...

The titles, too, sound...

-Pastichey.

-Exactly, yeah.

I think they're a bit... Whoever made them up,

they all sound a bit Never Say Never Again.

Do you know, though - this is an interesting thing -

Tomorrow Never Dies is only called that because of a misprint.

"Diets", should it be?

It's about a Murdoch-like...

or, in fact, more Robert Maxwell maybe, at the time,

and his newspaper is called Tomorrow.

And it was called Tomorrow Never Lies, which makes sense.

And they sent out a Xeroxed press release

and it was misread and became...

You know, it's a shame, because it's a much better title.

That is a shame, but it also is... I think it's very revealing,

because the meaninglessness of it all is what's...

Nobody really cares what it means

as long as it has certain kinds of qualities to it

that are Bond-like.

-Basically, you could call it Never Die Forever.

-Exactly.

There must be... I mean, surely online now

there is a James Bond title generator.

-Yes!

-But it's a bit like there's a tombola of words

-that are being plucked.

-Oh, yeah.

Which is why, actually, I think Never Say Never Again is quite a good one, because...

It should have had three more "nevers" in it.

The Brosnan films are...

You cannot and you should not want to take away from the fact

that they completely re-established Bond as a worldwide smash -

they were huge, those films.

But they don't bear up

to repeated watching like some of the others do,

and he, I think, remains the best thing in them.

I'm giving you the opportunity to walk out with your life.

Looking at our present situation

strictly as a banker, I would have to say

that numbers are not on your side.

Perhaps you failed to take into account my...

hidden assets.

You seem to have had a small reversal of fortune.

-Give me the name.

-I can't tell you.

They're rather like heritage projects of one sort or another.

They're like a kind of pristine country-house version of Bond

that you might need a membership card to get into,

and that seems to say something of its moment, too.

There's a faintly kind of...

over-manicured, plasticky quality

to the architecture of those films.

By the time you get to Die Another Day,

it's a very uneasy mixture of trying to be hard-edged

and the loopiest sci-fi since You Only Live Twice -

maybe even since Dr No.

-Invisible cars.

-Yeah.

Come on. Where are you?

All units report, now!

So Die Another Day was perceived to be stupidly outlandish

and then this odd thing happened,

I think they just decided they needed a new Bond.

They just didn't come back to Pierce Brosnan

and so he had his four.

The name's Bond.

James Bond.

Daniel Craig, um, was, uh...

on the internet, at least -

where else is there? - a very controversial choice.

There was a campaign about it because he was too blond.

Yeah, I know! Had they never seen a Roger Moore film?

-Roger Moore is... Could even be ginger?

-I would say he was sandy.

-Sandy.

-But by the end it's mysteriously very dark!

Also the texture seems remarkably different, doesn't it,

like it might have all come out of a can?

I don't know why(!) Ludicrous things like that.

Whereas Barbara Broccoli just saw him for who he is,

which is a very fine actor

and someone who would give it real sort of balls again.

And I think, for me, of the three so far,

Daniel Craig's Casino Royale is still the best.

It's a very well-thought-through film.

But it's a very lean screenplay. Again, it's simple.

It takes the essence of the book,

which is that Le Chiffre cannot afford to lose this game of cards

and Bond must beat him - I mean, you've got it.

Raise.

Raise.

12 million.

14,500,000, all in.

'It's just brilliantly tense.'

It's got amazing fights.

And as far as the character is concerned,

the real departure here is that every punch hurts.

All the bones are breakable

and we feel them all with him.

Ugh!

Those fights, they're the most savage

since Red Grant on the train in From Russia With Love, I think.

And you enjoy them in

a sort of slightly voyeuristic way

for the sheer nastiness of them.

I've always thought one of the appeals of Bond

is we all want to believe there is someone like him

who'll actually stop the world from being destroyed.

And I think something about Daniel Craig's success

is that you sort of feel like he's the man for now,

and that sort of means that you believe in him

much more as a fallible person,

slightly psychotic person,

but he's the right man in a tight corner.

But that also means he's not Superman -

he's going to have to...

You know. And the obvious thing which I still can't quite...

I remember thinking, "I can't believe they're going to do it -

"they're going to do it!"

They're going to do the scene,

which is with a carpet-beater

in the novel of Casino Royale.

But they strap him to a chair with no seat, they rip the seat out,

and they beat his bollocks with a knotted rope.

Argh!

It's one of the most terrifying things in all the films.

It's incredible - no pun intended - that they had the balls to do it.

I've got a little itch down there.

Would you mind?

Argh, no! No!

'I remember, the audience that I saw it with,'

I mean, there were shrieks from them.

Because, you know, it's unimaginable.

It's bad enough if you catch yourself getting out of a car.

Give me the password

and I'll at least let her live.

Do it soon enough and she might even be in one piece.

HE LAUGHS

The other thing about it is that it discovers Bond's psychopathy

which, in a way, has been the secret of this series of films all along.

We've known somehow that to do all these things you must be mad,

you must have a very weird view of other people,

a view that's probably quite useful,

and is useful, for people in the secret service

who are dissociated from other people,

people who lie all the time, who have to kill people

and watch people die,

who then have to go back home to their families or whoever.

And, actually, it feels an incredible relief

for that to be acknowledged in some way.

There's that scene where Judi Dench says to him,

"You better keep your distance,

"you better not get too emotionally involved in this.

"Not that that's ever been a problem for you."

I would ask you if you could remain emotionally detached.

But I don't think that's your problem, is it, Bond?

No.

There's this constant flirtation -

they're going to sack him or he's going to resign

because he's actually one job away from cracking.

I think it's a very good film.

Then, of course, they do it again, it's a misstep.

It's a massively confident, clever film,

followed too quickly by Quantum Of Solace.

-Which Roger Moore could have done.

-Well, it's an odd film.

It was done very quickly

and not polished.

So it's 90 minutes long,

which would've been the leanest Bond film ever, but it's actually...

The fights and the violence have no narrative,

you just watch - or you don't watch -

this quite boring,

absolutely baffling plot.

And Daniel Craig has gone from being

this tortured, slightly psychotic agent

into a sort of grunt, I think.

Agh!

Ugh!

Ugh!

Argh!

But let's tease out his gruntiness a bit,

because that seems to me a departure, too,

that he's the first actor who...

He's got the least complicated hair of all of them,

and also he's the one who's willing to uglify himself.

The fact is he's very unconventionally good-looking.

He's got a sort of ugly-pretty quality to him.

He's got amazing eyes but he can look quite brutish.

He's like somebody Genet would have liked, isn't he?

Oh, definitely.

It's no accident, when he comes out of the sea in those Speedos,

that actually he became a very popular Bond

with the entire audience.

Because, you know, he looks incredible,

but it sort of goes way back to Connery and the savagery, I think.

Yeah, but Connery's suffering was never really important

to the narrative.

That, in a way, has become one of the subjects of these films.

It must be symptomatic of our age.

That's what we are demanding of Bond.

And actually, he's become a much more plausible secret agent

for our times.

Now, that means...

That doesn't mean we don't want him to look great in a tux,

doesn't mean we don't want him to go skiing or...

And yet there seems to be room in those fantasies now

-for some pretty dark truths about ourselves as well.

-Yes.

I think you can look at the actual texture of Skyfall.

The fact that...

One of Skyfall's great successes is it's such a London film.

It sort of uses London in the way that it's so rarely been done,

apart from top-and-tailing Big Ben and a red bus for universal exports.

But to actually...

You know, when M and Bill Tanner are driving back

and MI6 explodes, it's a grey London day.

SIRENS WAIL

Oh.

For God's sake!

Just get out of the way.

-Don't you recognise the car?

-Madam...

It's rather lovely, that.

That's a Tube we could get on. It's good, that.

This is a Bond we, with just a little bit of a push sideways,

might believe is out there trying to keep the British end up.

Or perhaps the founding fantasies

of what this series is about have shifted.

Right at the beginning,

it was clearly satisfying a sense of Britain being decolonising,

being slightly down-at-heel, losing its place,

losing its influence in the world everywhere,

except in the strange dream world of James Bond.

I don't know...

We're in a sort of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange world.

And what if Julian Assange wasn't Julian Assange -

a rather strange and flawed and muddled individual -

but a Bond villain with a plan,

with that strange hair and with some clear-cut motives?

I'm afraid that is exactly the truth!

He's absolutely a Bond villain in waiting, isn't he?

-Funny hair, funny accent...

-I do hope he's got an underground base.

I think he has a treadmill instead, doesn't he?

He's hollowed out the Uruguay Embassy, much to their distaste.

I think he's planning to divert the Thames into the earth's molten core.

It's been done.

So, Matthew, who's the best James Bond in the world?

Who would win?

The best James Bond? In a fight between...

In a fight between...

In a fight between George Lazenby and all the others...

Timothy Dalton.

The complexity, the edge,

the brutality of Timothy Dalton.

I think I'm getting a little of that here, actually.

The connoisseur's Bond.

Well, as you know, I'm a huge fan of Tim Dalton,

but I've got to go for Sean Connery in the end.

There's only one...in the end.

Nobody does it better - even though it's a Roger Moore...

-A Roger Moore song!

-This never happened to the other guy.

-Ha!

Argh!

JAMES BOND THEME PLAYS