Looking for Mr Bond: 007 at the BBC

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.