54 replies to this topic

[Revelator]

Incidentally, Bond/Fleming expert Ben Macintyre published an article in the London Times on Jan. 31, discussing Fleming the man and TV series. Does anyone have access to that article? The Times is behind a paywall and inaccessible.

[glidrose]

I see that Dirk Bogarde's love child is playing Fleming.

[Janus Assassin]

I love it so far. I'm not big on TV shows at all, but I think I finally found one I can follow weekly. 

[glidrose]

My sentiments exactly!


http://www.independe...ed-9129253.html


Kudos to David Lister
 
[quote David Lister article]Those who watched Fleming on Sky Atlantic this week, a dramatisation of the life of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, might have been surprised to see the title character engaging in hand-to-hand fighting with Nazis, certainly not something Ian Fleming ever did in real life.


Fortunately, readers of this paper had an explanation of this, when the drama’s director Mat Whitecross told us last Tuesday: “Everything’s based on something real but we have sexed it up at times. Fleming spent a lot of time desk-bound, which doesn’t make great drama. But in fact he did get out in the field, he did get to Germany, he did go out to France and so on, but, yeah, he didn’t actually have any fisticuffs with any Nazis. But it felt like it would be cool if he did.”


It’s a priceless insight into the philosophy of a TV dramatisation of a real-life historical figure. Yeah, this didn’t happen, but it felt like it would be cool. Cool indeed. And in the quest for cool, why not go further? Surely Ian Fleming could have beaten Hitler black and blue while he was in Germany. Yeah they didn’t actually have any fisticuffs, but hey...


We have always felt a little superior about screen dramas playing fast and loose with history. It was something the Americans did, we sniffed – Spielberg downgrading the British contribution to D-Day, for example. But Fleming is a British drama, produced by BBC America, and Mr Whitecross a British director. Does taking a little dramatic licence matter? I think it does. In an age when many of our TV dramas are biopics and people learn about historical figures from the screen as much as from books, yes it matters that these real lives are treated with some regard for historical accuracy.


Dramatists and directors can’t have it both ways. If you want a drama about a spy novelist with a complicated love life who rushes in headlong to knock Nazis about, then use your skills to create one.


If you want to cash in and get easy publicity by using a well-known real-life figure responsible for an even better known fictional spy, then at least be faithful to the facts. To do otherwise is actually desperately uncool.

[Revelator]

Yes, I get the sense that this series took the easy way out of portraying the life of a writer. Hacks always try to over-dramatize everything and trump up action. Trying to portray the complicated process whereby a writer draws upon his life and imagination, mixing the two to create fiction, is difficult for people with small imaginations.

I think an imaginative crew could film a more honest, less sensationalistic biopic of Fleming, especially if they had license to dramatize bits and pieces from the Bond novels. 

Such a film would portray the life of the mind. It would not need to be told in chronological order. Instead it could be anchored by brief scenes of Fleming writing at his desk in GoldenEye and reflecting on his past. While typing the screen might fade to the casino in Estoril, showing Commander Fleming in his Naval Intelligence days watching Nazis gamble and fantasizing about foiling them, with the scene gradually transforming into the Bond/LeChiffre card game battle in Casino Royale. Then there might be a cut back to GoldenEye, showing Fleming's marriage to Ann, intercut with Bond's romance with Vesper. Scenes of the couple swimming in Jamaica could be juxtaposed with a staging of the underwater scenes from the books. Later scenes of the Fleming's souring marriage could be contrasted with romantic scenes from the later Bond novels. The details of Fleming's international travels could shade into Bond's. Eventually fact and fiction would grow intermingled and equally impressionistic, reminiscent of the some of the hallucinatory scenes from the later episodes of The Singing Detective, where a writer and his creation interact and antagonize each other. The series could end with Fleming's miserable death, visually showing how Bond exhausted and killed his creator.

I would be interested in watching such a series. But I'm not interested in seeing Fleming's life distorted into a proto-Bond film. The truth is much more interesting. Combine that with an examination of how Fleming's imagination worked, and how he transformed reality, and you might have something in the right spirit.

Edited by Revelator, 14 February 2014 - 10:39 PM.

[SecretAgentFan]

There is no way a network, not even cable, would finance something like that.

 

The best way would be a documentary.  That I would like to see.

[glidrose]

This tosh series ends on a rubbish note (read: lie). IF intends to name his spy Harry Aitken but brother Peter convinces him that James Bond sounds better. No mention of Peregrine Carruthers, I'm afraid. All this happening in 1945.

 

The series could have been worse than it is, but still remains not much good.

[thecasinoroyale]

I missed the first episode sadly but will have them all on Sky On Demand once the final one airs, so I will watch them back-to-back.

 

Looking forward to it...!

[Simon]

It is all out on dvd in mid March anyway.  So Amazon says.

[JackUnion]

I really wanted to like this show...but it just played up a lot of rough sex and missed connections. It didn't even necessarily have to be about Ian Fleming, this could have been any half baked WWII drama. It's unfortunate that it drags Fleming through its muddy convoluted and abruptly ended plot. 

 

PASS.

[Vauxhall]

I'm enjoying the series, but am nowhere near blown away by it.

It has, however, solidified my initial thinking that Dominic Cooper shouldn't become Bond.

[Jim]

Bit poor, overall.

[Odd Jobbies]

Started OK, with some fun nods to Fleming, but it's downhill into shlock melodrama thereafter. It's done in the broadest strokes possible which is a disservice to the detail of Fleming's work. Cooper is good, but ultimately miscast.

 

However, the best line is indeed saved for the final episode, involving the choice for the name of his fictional spy.

 

Perhaps they could've utilised the Goldeneye writing scenario more throughout, crosscutting the writing of the novels with the wartime narrative. This could've shown the source of some of Bond's adventures, while exploiting the artistic licence of Fleming using his recollections and along with his imagination, merging his fictional character with the real wartime Fleming. Maybe this way they could've had more Billy Liar-esque fun, taken more liberties and made it far more exciting.

 

But instead they trod an uncertain middle line between documented facts and the small liberties the writers of FLEMING took. Well, when it comes to primetime entertainment , tell the truth, or lie big. Small white lies never won an emmy or a big slice of the ratings.

Edited by Odd Jobbies, 19 March 2014 - 10:20 AM.

[SecretAgentFan]

Saw the first episode.  Loved the "Thunderball"-esque beginning.  Then it degenerated very quickly into "bad boy, always disappointing the family, clutching at a chance to redeem himself"-story which, however, I thought was told pretty well.

 

Dominic Cooper is so different looking from the real Ian Fleming that it bothers me, unfortunately.  On the other hand, it´s probably the clearest signal for me to get it: this is not a Fleming biography - it´s the attempt at making a Bond film without the budget, using all the clichéd elements instead. 

 

If the next episodes get worse, I´ll be disappointed.  If they stay this course, I´ll at least be entertained enough.

[Revelator]

Nicholas Rankin, author of the book Ian Fleming's Commandos, wrote a three-part blog post on Fleming for the Oxford University Press Blog. He has good fun dismantling the series' delusions of historicity. Start here and continue here and end here.

Edited by Revelator, 07 April 2014 - 10:05 PM.

[glidrose]

Does anybody know who that girl Fleming/Cooper dances with in the final episode near the end? She's familiar but doesn't get a screen credit.

[Royal Dalton]

Can you post a screen shot of her?

[glidrose]

Uh, no.

[Vauxhall]

Don't recognise her personally. Photo below.

 

[glidrose]

Thanks Vauxhall!

[SecretAgentFan]

Finished it now and... well, I stuck with it because it was kind of entertaining, alluding to famous scenes and concepts.  But in the end, I still was disappointed.  If one does not know anything about Fleming one will probably enjoy this much more.

[Jace]

i couldn't get through the first twenty minutes of the series- and i;m someone who could watch endless docs and biopics about Fleming. the show seemed contrived and self-conscious. character behavior was exaggerated in a way that seemed too "hollywood", and i could almost hear the director call "action" just a beat before the actors launched into their scenes. they seemed to be portraying movie people, not real people. maybe i'll like it better later on dvd, but i was not impressed. i checked out the Charles Dance film again today and found the performances far more authentic and human, and the experience more satisfying overall (despite that biopics flaws). -jason (Spy Vibe)

[archer1949]

Well, that was disappointing. I just got the BBC America cable channel mostly for Doctor Who and Orphan Black, but I was also looking forward to catching up on this via On Demand. But yeah, pretty lazy take on a writer's life. 

[MkB]

I finally got to watch it last week. Watchable if you turn off you "Bond fan" brain, and disappointing if you are ever so slightly a Bond nerd. All in all, Fleming is portrayed as a very unlovable man - which he probably was, but, I suspect, in a slightly different manner than the one depicted here. It's a pity that all reference to his experience as a journalist is avoided. As it is, he looks like a Bertie-Wooster-without-his-Jeeves, trying his hand at stock-broking with the results you would expect from Bertie Wooster, and getting a commission only because Mummy knows "Winston". On the face of it, if anything the series makes you doubt the good judgement of Old Winston... 

 

For the record, this series made me realize that I was not only a Bond nerd, but also a marine biology nerd... The underwater opening sequence was a first disappointment to me. I am absolutely sure it was shot in the Mediterranean, because the underwater landscape is quite typical and I could name all the species appearing on screen, and this is not what you would be seeing in the Carribbean. I was really miffed when I realised this was supposed to be off Goldeneye, I had to make an extra effort to suspend disbelief :(

[Simon]

Finally saw this and biopic veracity issues aside, I did enjoy the drama of it all.

 

Yes, all the elements that veered from truths did jar slightly, but once swept under the carpet in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind way, the series was well shot and seemed to have money spent on it.

 

That said, the Aitkin conversation really should have been pulled....