Time for a station break... `Tomorrow Never Dies` wins the ratings war despite technical hitches.

24-Jun-2003 • Bond News

"Time for a station break".. Or was that someone knocking pause on ITV1`s play of "Tomorrow Never Dies" on Sunday night? The showing of Brosnan`s second outing as 007 capped off a weekend of Bond related programming on ITV in the UK, although not without a technical hitch.

During the scene where Bond sees the early news footage reporting Paris Carver`s death, the UK broadcast froze for nearly three minutes. ITV must have been so embarrassed by the irony, that they failed to apologise for the technical fault at the end of the film.

But to give ITV1 credit, as the film was shown at a slightly later time than is usual for a Bond screening in the UK, the scenes of Wai Lin killing a guard with a throwing star and Bond kicking a fallen guard in the face were both included. These scenes are usually cut becuase of the "sadism" factor - the same issue which caused the BBFC to enforce their ommission on the first TND DVD release in the UK.

Carver`s media mogul plot also won the ratings war - clocking up an impressive 6.8 million viewers and a 35% audience share - the highest of the day. The BBC were hoping to win with their final part of the hit drama "The State of Play", but only managed to muster 5 million viewers. US smash real-time drama series `24` almost failed to register on BBC2.

The later than usual showing of "Tomorrow Never Dies" was also a likely reason for the slight dip in Bond ratings. The `00-Heaven` season in 2003 averaged 7 million viewers when films were screen at 8pm.

Thanks to TheScurra for the ratings data.