Listening to James Bond at the BBC (Part V: The Man with the Golden Gun)

Whenever I read a James Bond novel, I follow it up (in this order):

1. any film adaptations
2. any radio/audio adaptations
3. any comic adaptations

Thus, I have slowly worked my way through the BBC's radio adaptations of the novels, produced by Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayres since 2008; I wrote up the first four (in my order, not the release order, which is wonky) back in 2017,  and then another four in 2019. Since then, one more has been released, of the very last Bond novel, so I am doing a quick write-up here to complete my thoughts on the series.

(I don't know if there are more to come. Each of the three remaining novels seems to have some kind of disqualifying mark. I think Casino Royale's rights are more complicated than other novels; The Spy Who Loved Me has very little James Bond in it; and the BBC already did You Only Live Twice, albeit back in the 1990s with Michael Jayston. That would just leave the various short stories of For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy & The Living Daylights. Some of them would make pretty bad radio, I think, but you could do some good stuff with "For Your Eyes Only," "Risico," and "Octopussy," at least.)

I don't love these as much as others seem to, mostly because lead actor Toby Stephens just seems to be "there" as Bond and little else. There's no charm, no danger, to his performance.

The Man with the Golden Gun by Archie Scottney (2020)

 

This is, thus, like most of them, okay. I like the actors who play M and Felix, even if I don't like Bond, and this has good parts for both. Lisa Dillon, who plays the "Bond girl" in most of these, is in it, but plays a different character, somewhat to its detriment; I didn't think Moira Quirk quite hit the right note. The big problems of the audio, though, are mostly the big problems of the book: Bond's brainwashing is resolved too easily, Bond has no real reason to not kill Scaramanga as soon as he meets him, and Scaramanga is a bit of low-rate villain. The novel does has a good action climax, but that gets truncated and becomes less effective on audio for obvious reasons.

Listening to James Bond at the BBC (Part II)

My books Bondathon has been pretty comprehensive. Whenever I read a James Bond book, I then watch the corresponding film(s). And then, if it exists, I listen to the BBC Radio drama. (And then, if it exists, I read the comic book!) A couple years ago, I wrote up my thoughts on the first four BBC radio dramas in chronological order; since then I've listened to four more: the next two in chronological sequence, Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, plus I circled back and listened to the Moonraker and Live and Let Die adaptations, which were both released a couple years after I read the relevant books.

Overall Thoughts

I continue to be baffled by the production order of these stories. Why do faithful adaptations, but go from On Her Majesty's Secret Service (book 11) to Diamonds are Forever (book 4) to Thunderball (book 9) to Moonraker (book 3) to Live and Let Die (book 2)? This interview with director Martin Jarvis suggests he sometimes imagines the audios as having their own order: he says Thunderball follows Diamonds because the health clinic visit that opens Thunderball is Bond recuperating after the beating he takes in Diamonds. This is consistent with the fact that at the end of OHMSS, M mentions he has a case for Bond coming up involving diamonds in Sierra Leone, which is the premise of Diamonds. The opening of Moonraker links up with the end of Thunderball, and Bond knows more about nuclear weapons in Moonraker than in Thunderball, so it clearly does not take place in book order.

But this can't always be the case. Dr. No, which was made first, opens with a reference to From Russia, with Love, which was produced third. Live and Let Die has Bond still using the Beretta, which Q replaced in Dr. No. In OHMSS, they are hunting down Blofeld and SPECTRE, who have never been mentioned before if you're in production order. The worst implication of the switch is that it totally undermines the ending of OHMSS if, after Tracy dies, Bond goes on a random adventure about diamond smugglers-- never mentioning his dead wife at all!

The weakest part of this series is that, alas, the more I listen to them, the less I like Toby Stephens as James Bond. He might be a good actor (I don't really remember him from any of the things I've seen him in), but he's not a good James Bond. His flirtations are just flat-- I felt he really botched it in the scenes with Domino in Thunderball, for example, no sexiness at all. It's not all his fault, because part of what I don't like is the first-person present-tense narration he has to perform during action sequences, which is usually ridiculous sounding. Although, I'm not convinced he has to deliver it as a grunt. On the other hand, as you'll see below, I felt the Moonraker and OHMSS adaptations really played to his strengths.

But the real highlight of this series is Martin Jarvis "as the voice of Ian Fleming"; the veteran actor and director provides the third-person narration, and he is excellent at providing atmosphere and character and suspense with his voice-. So much so that I often imagine his voice when reading long narrative passages in the actual books, just as I typically imagine Sean Connery for Bond's dialogue, and Judi Dench for M's. Yes, I know it doesn't all quite go together.

I am also coming around to Julian Sands as Q. He plays it very differently to how Peter Capaldi did in Dr. No, but I like the image of Q-- very different to the films-- as a breathless upper-class enthusiast of all things technological. I like it.

Thunderball by Archie Scottney (2016)

This book ends up not playing too well on audio, at least not as adapted by Archie Scottney. Thunderball is one of the more investigatory Bond audios, but Scottney's script cuts out most of the legwork that Bond goes through. Plus, underwater battle sequences don't really play to the strength of the medium, especially when Bond has to narrate all his action to himself. The romance with Domino is substantially cut down, too-- there's no sexy scene where Bond sucks venom out of her toe (or whatever it was precisely). Instead in one scene, she calls him and asks if he wants to go swimming; the next scene, they're post-coital. Meh. Dialogue is the strength of audio; let me hear him seducing her!

I liked Josh Stamberg as Felix Leiter in Diamonds are Forever, but found him much less effective here; the 1950s crime film accent worked for Diamonds, but sticks out as a sore thumb in this story. It might be authentic for Emilio Largo (Tom Conti) to have a thick Italian accent, but I found it distracting; he seemed more an accent than a character, and thus his confrontations with Bond (especially when they play cards together) lacked any sizzle. On the other hand, I thought Janet Montgomery did a great job as Domino. Charming, flirtatious, dangerous, but vulnerable-- she could be a screen Bond girl to look at her, too. Shame she has to flirt with Toby Stephens.

Moonraker by Archie Scottney (2018)

Moonraker didn't come out until 2018, which means that I couldn't have listened to it back when I read the novel in 2015, so I plugged it in after Thunderball... which ended up restoring my faith in this whole undertaking, as Moonraker is the most enjoyable of these yet. Partially that's down the book, which is much more focused than other Bond novels: it all takes place in England, and only in a couple locations, and there's much more of an espionage focus than an action one. First Bond helps M expose Sir Hugo Drax as a card cheat, then Bond goes undercover at Sir Hugo's Moonraker project, a missile defense system. The fact that this is the only Bond novel where Bond sleeps with no one makes a virtue of Stephens's lack of charm; he flirts with Gala Brand, but she's not interested in flirting back. But also there's very little (maybe no) first-person narration from Bond, and much more third-person narration from Jarvis.

That all sounds like damning with faint praise, but it really is very good. Stephens is on point. Samuel West makes a great obnoxiously smug Sir Hugo Drax (the bit where he explains his life story is excellent), and all the scenes the two share really work. Katherine Kingsley is fantastic as Gala Brand, competent enough to do some dangerous stuff herself, but still needing to be saved by Bond as things escalate. The action sequences are intense, especially, when Bond and Brand almost drown, and their escape from Drax at the climax. Sound design was really on point, too; there were some chilling bits, especially the launch of the Moonraker rocket. It was just full of nice touches: John Baddely plays Winston Churchill (prime minister at the time, playing up some of the period elements), some key sequences are done as BBC Radio broadcasts. The whole thing feels alternately tense and charming. If they ever do Casino Royale, I think it will also be a good one.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Archie Scottney (2014)

Like Moonraker, this story plays more to the strengths of the format and of the casting. Stephens has good rapport with Lisa Dillon as Tracy; it's perfectly plausible that they would fall for each other in this version. The infiltration of Blofeld's clinic is well done. Again, sneaking into a place by pretending to be someone else is good for audio in a way that action sequences are not. But even the action sequences are strong here. Bond skiing down the Alp just sounds great, and I liked the way the score by Mark Holden and Michael Lopez incorporates "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" because the sequence is set on Christmas Eve. One of the things I like about the book is how much Fleming makes you feel Bond's physical struggle, and that's conveyed well in this story.

I didn't even mind Toby Stephens. Joanna Lumley plays Irma Bunt-- given she was one of Bunt's victims in the film, this is a nice touch, and she does a great job. Overall, it's in my top three of the seven of these I've listened to so far.

My main quibble is with the wedding at the end. The film had Moneypenny, Q, and M all there, which doesn't happen in the book. Here, they don't turn up to the wedding itself, but they do all appear afterwards, as Bond, Tracy, and Tracy's father are celebrating before the newlyweds leave on their honeymoon. It's a bit too sentimental, and smacks more of the films rather than the novels on which these stories are supposedly based, where there is no Q, and Bond's relationships with M and Moneypenny are much cooler.

Live and Let Die by Archie Scottney (2019)

Really, I think these adaptations mostly live and die on the source material. Not entirely (Thunderball was a much better novel than radio play), but the weak novels always seem to become weak radio plays. My memories of Live and Let Die's novel aren't that it's terrible, but they aren't the most fond, either, and what works in prose-- the tense train ride to Florida, the methodical staking out of Harlem fried chicken joints, the desperate dragging through shark-filled waters-- is weak material on audio. Add to that a story replete with Americans, and thus BBC Radio American accents, and it alternates between boring and excruciating. (Weirdly, it was apparently recorded in America, and many of the actors actually are American. They still sound off; not sure what's up with that. Trying to hard to do period accents?)

I thought casting an African-American as Solitaire was an interesting move, though perhaps wasted on radio; I didn't realize the actress was black until I looked her up later. It makes Mr. Big a little less of a racialized villain (no longer is he a black man threatening "our" white women), and it adds a charge to when a hotel owner is skeptical of Bond's cover story that he and Solitaire are married. And Rutina Wesley did a good job with what is surely one of the more boring women Bond falls for.

Quarrel previously appeared (and died) in the adaptation of Dr. No, there played by Clarke Peters, but this time out he's played by Ron Cephas Jones.

To Be Continued...

That's it for the Ayres/Jarvis BBC Bond adaptations for now; they have recorded eight, and I have heard all eight. Live and Let Die actually makes Toby Stephens the most prolific actor to have played Bond, beating out Roger Moore's seven appearances in the role. Shame I don't like him more, but I think I am getting used to him.

But that's not the end of what the BBC has had to do with James Bond, as I shall explore in the months (or years) to come...

Listening to James Bond at the BBC (Part I)

As of this writing, the BBC has produced seven radio plays based on the James Bond novels. Following a 1990 one-off starring Michael Jayston (Doctor Who's the Valeyard!), ones starring Toby Stephens (Mr. Rochester in the 2006 Jane Eyre) have come out every two years or so since 2008. They seem to be doing the Stephens ones in the same order as the film versions, though they did Thunderball out of sequence (rights reasons? the legal tangle is pretty infamous) and skipped You Only Live Twice (because that's the one they already did with Jayston?). That seems kind of a weird choice to me. The plays are still set in the same order as the books, though; the opening of From Russia, with Love references the end of Diamonds are Forever, even though From Russia was made first!

In any case, I decided I'd listen to each radio play following the relevant book and film, so thus far I've heard Diamonds are Forever, From Russia, with Love, Dr. No, and Goldfinger. What follows are some general thoughts on the overall format and performances of the Toby Stephens stories (I haven't heard the Jayston one yet, and won't for some time), and then some on the specific plays I've heard.

The Format

The stories are produced by Rosalind Ayres and directed Martin Jarvis, a wife-and-husband duo who are also actors. Jarvis has been in Doctor Who on TV a couple times, but I primarily know the duo from their appearance as a husband and wife in the excellent Doctor Who audio drama Jubilee by Rob Shearman. Jarvis also appears in the stories as Ian Fleming, which basically means he voices third-person narration when it's called for-- there's not a ton of it, but it's used to set up very visual moments and smooth over some transitions. Jarvis has an excellent voice, and I kinda wish his narration was used a little bit more. There's occasionally in-scene first-person narration from Stephens as Bond, which I like less. He sort of growls it, and at first I took it for very awkward talking-to-himself-to-explain-actions-on-radio, until about halfway through Diamonds are Forever, when he was talking in a situation where that made no sense. I could do less with of this.

All the stories I've heard are pretty straight adaptations of the original novels-- incidents are trimmed for time, but nothing is changed very dramatically.

• Toby Stephens as James Bond. Stephens is a pretty grim-sounding James Bond. I like the performance, but it's not quite the Bond I imagine from the books: he's a little more upper-class than I picture, coming across as more snobby. Of course, the Bond of the books is kind of snobby, but I feel as though he's acting snob; he's a brute playing at civilization. Without that the access to his interiority afforded by prose (or a visual performance by Daniel Craig, who captures this aspect of the character best), he comes across more like an actual snob. Which, I should say, works-- it's just a different version of the character, a more cultured, less studied one. Stephens has a good tough-guy act, and does well at the banter and stuff; I think he's less successful at the love scenes and other parts showing emotional investment, where I think he is a little too sharp. I had a hard time buying he had any real interest in Tiffany Case in Diamonds are Forever, for example, and the same went for Tania in From Russia, with Love. He came across as more tender toward Honey in Dr. No, however-- not sure why.
• John Standing as M. Standing appeared in one Doctor Who audio drama (Gods and Monsters), but I didn't think much of him there. Other than that, I know he's appeared in stuff I've watched, but nothing that's made much of an impression. Anyway, I really enjoyed him as M: suitably British, crusty, and unamused, which is exactly what the part (which really is a small one) calls for. He especially shines in his couple scenes in From Russia, with Love and the opening of Dr. No.
• Julian Sands as Q. Didn't really leave much of an impression, to be honest. Just kind of there. On the other hand...
• 
  Peter Capaldi as Q. The twelfth Doctor Who played Q in just Dr. No (the first recorded, but the third chronologically), and he is great. Properly scathing and dismissive of Bond's ladylike firearms. Too bad he never appeared again.
• Josh Stamberg as Felix Leiter. He actually is an American, and he sounds like he came out of a 1950s crime film. Which, given that in Diamonds are Forever, Felix is a private eye working for the Pinkertons, is exactly right. That said, he wasn't the original:
• Lloyd Owen as Felix Leiter. Owen played Felix in just one production, Goldfinger, and he is not an American. Let's just say I'm very glad Felix was recast for later stories.
• John Sessions as Rene Mathis. I really like John Sessions' audio work I've heard (mostly, of course, Doctor Who stuff), so it was a pleasure to hear him in these, though Mathis doesn't really do a whole lot in From Russia, with Love. Hopefully we get Casino Royale someday.
• Janie Dee as Moneypenny. I don't think I know the actress from anything else, but like John Standing, she's great in a very small part. She sounds very young and very flirty, which is in line with how I imagine the character, though the writing here probably owes more to the films than the actual novels.

Diamonds are Forever by Archie Scottney (2015)

I didn't like the book a whole lot, as I said, but Scottney's adaptation thankfully cuts out some of the more unpleasant parts, like Bond's joke about "jiggers" and Wint and Kidd being homosexual. I actually think the whole thing comes to life a little bit more on audio-- Bond being up against American gangs in the 1950s means all the bad guys are doing 1950s American gangster voices, which 1) didn't occur to me when reading the book, and 2) is actually pretty fun, making the audio more lively than the often dull book. Still, there's not a whole lot to be done with the fact that it's way too easy for Bond to work his way up the diamond-smuggling pipeline, and I'm not sure about the choice to play the master villain, Seraffimo Spang, with a flamboyant "gay" voice.

From Russia, with Love by Archie Scottney (2012)

The adaptation here is almost too straightforward, cutting out most of the parts while Bond is in Istanbul reveals that a little bit too much of the novel is Bond waiting for something to happen! In this case, the film is surprisingly more faithful by including the Gypsy catfight, while the audio does not. The audio wisely makes the flight on the Orient Express the bulk of its story-- it's a setting and situation well-suited to audio. The real highlight of this one is the big-name casting: Nathaniel Parker (Inspector Lynley), Tim Pigott-Smith, Mark Gatiss(!), John Sessions in two roles, and Eileen Atkins as Klebb! Gatiss, Sessions, and Atkins all do excellent jobs as various villains, though I was disappointed by Parker as "Red" Grant, who wasn't quite as innately menacing as I imagined when reading the book. Olga Fedori was very good as Tatiana Romanova, as well. The strong performances really carried me through this, though it has its moments. I particularly liked the very ending, where it seems like Bond might be dying from Klebb's poison. I also enjoyed the music (there's a lot of guitar), which didn't really stand out to me in the other installments.

Dr. No by Hugh Whitemore (2008)

The only one of these to be written by Whitemore, Dr. No is probably the best of them thus far. Partially this is down to the source material, I think, as the novel has exactly the right amount of plot to sustain a ninety-minute story. As it's a pretty down-the-line adaptation, the real pleasure is in the performances, which are overall quality. In addition to the aforementioned Capaldi as Q, David Suchet (TV's Poirot) plays Dr. No himself-- I was a little skeptical of his strange voice at first, but once I adjusted, I really liked it. The dinner scene between Bond and No is the highlight of this story, as Doctor No relates his dismal backstory. Clarke Peters is also charmingly likeable as Quarrel (I hope they bring him back if they ever get around to doing Live and Let Die), and I enjoyed the small cameos of the husband-and-wife duo of Simon Williams (Counter Measures's Gilmore) and Lucy Fleming (Survivors's Jenny and, I just learned, niece of Ian Fleming).

The adaptation dials back some of the racial elements of the novel (there are no "Chigroes" here), but keeps others (Bond's instantaneous distrust of a character upon realizing they're Chinese), and adds new ones (some of the Chinese characters are played by white women). The only big downside of this adaptation is the decision to have Bond narrate the centipede sequence in the first person-- probably no one could save this, but Toby Stephens certainly doesn't. The music is spooky, but the whole sequence is just undercut by Bond's "fearful" gasps and shouts as the centipede marches across him.

Goldfinger by Archie Scottney (2010)

Goldfinger was a so-so novel, and it makes for a so-so radio play. In the book, Bond runs into Goldfinger playing cards at a resort, playing golf at a club, and at his own house for dinner; like the film, the radio version streamlines this by cutting out the visit to Goldfinger's home and going straight to when Bond pursues Goldfinger across Europe to Switzerland, and the golf is thankfully less boring on audio than in prose. But moving the story to the audio medium reveals how little it is that Bond does through the whole middle of the story: on film you can see him lurking, and in prose you get his thoughts on everything, but on audio he may as well not be there a lot of the time, and his intervention in the whole affair comes across as even smaller than on audio.

What I should have predicted would really let it down are the accents, since much of Goldfinger takes place in America. The group of gangsters Goldfinger assembles range from ridiculous to awful (especially since some are actors doubling up, so they are required to depict two different American accents apiece), and getting Rosamund Pike in to play Pussy Galore was surely a bit of a coup... but I didn't care for her Southern accent at all. (Plus there's so little interplay between her and Bond that her falling for him at the end comes across as nonsensical.) The BBC haven't done Live and Let Die yet, but maybe I should be thankful for that. That said, Ian McKellen plays Goldfinger, which is great casting even if it contradicts the story's statement that Goldfinger doesn't sound English!