Review of `The True Story: James Bond` documentary

The Telegraph have reviewed the new documentary "The True Story: James Bond", which aired on Channel Five in the UK last night.

Click here for MI6 coverage of the documentary.

James Bond: the True Story (Five) was infinitely better than last week’s Indiana Jones: the True Story – largely because much of it seemed true. Admittedly, there was still that weird reluctance to believe a fiction writer might make anything up. Nonetheless, with some serious Ian Fleming experts on hand to keep it in line, the programme was gradually forced to abandon its quest to find which individual was “the real James Bond”. As a happy result, it then concentrated instead on noting some genuine parallels between certain aspects of Fleming’s life and certain aspects of Bond’s – while still leaving room for such factors as imagination and commercial nous.

It also threw in plenty of nice, if fairly random facts about both the books and movies. That famous Aston Martin, we learnt, was a suggestion by a reader, who persuaded Fleming that Bond’s original Bentley wasn’t cool enough. A well-deserved bow was given to Ken Wallis, who built and flew the gyrocopter in the film of You Only Live Twice – and who, at 92, still flies them.

Of course, the programme did get a bit bogged down when it came to Bond’s treatment of women, not sure whether or how to justify it. In the end, it duly settled for the line that the tough women in the recent films have been “more realistic” – rather than, say, a different fantasy for a different time.

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