The first-ever official 007 brand extension to the small screen debuts Friday, Nov. 10, presumably to introduce James Bond to new and broader audiences through a streaming reality competition show on Amazon Prime, the new owner of the MGM studio distributor of Bond movies.
This combination of a much slower-paced version of The Amazing Race and the multiple-choice trivia question game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire is fine but not great. For Bond fans, perhaps the best thing is that it’s certainly not bad at all – not cheesy or silly or obnoxious or anything that I could envision cheapening the Bond brand.
Unlike Amazing Race,, contestants do not compete against each other but instead follow clues to use their wits and physical abilities to figure out where and get to a suitcase with the next-level trivia question. We follow one pair of brothers for most of the first episodes before seeing any contestants — by the end of the second episode we’ve still only seen four of the nine teams. Some challenges involve hiking up hills and trudging through mud and chest-deep into cold lakes. Some involve seemingly breaking into buildings and picking up and measuring the length of a boa constrictor.
Inexplicably, the name Bond is never heard in the first two episodes of the series executive produced by Bond franchise owners Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of Eon Productions. Puzzlingly, other than the title and Bond music (the show’s theme is credited to five-time Bond movie composer David Arnold, but most enticing are the terrific hard-pounding Hans Zimmer queues from No Time to Die), there is little Bond representation in this show – no movie clips, no characters mentioned, and none of the trivia questions relate to Bond (they are just general and mostly historical questions mostly relating to Europe — all contestants are from Great Britain). While Bond fans will recognize some Bond vehicles and locations, they are not noted in any way. When two competitors come across a vintage Rolls Royce (additional Bond vehicles and objects spotted in the same garage), host Brian Cox’s tape recording instructions to the competitors describe the model of the Rolls and its fine craftsmanship, but there is no mention of Goldfinger or a clip from movie. Likewise when competitors come across a tarantula (Bond fans will know it from Dr. No) that needs to be put on a scale to be weighed, or when one couple is supplied the green Jaguar convertible driven by the villain in Die Another Day, and when others are supplied a familiar Bond movie Land Rover. Same thing when competitors are sent to frequent Bond movie location Venice and recent locations like Matera. A married couple is sent to a spot near the tall stone bridge from No Time to Die (no mention), where the wife is challenged to climb a giant crane – no mention of the clear reference to the pre-title sequence from Casino Royale.
In fact, so far the competitors haven’t needed to be the least bit knowledgeable about Bond or even be Bond fans.
Here’s hoping the show’s future episodes and the already-ordered second season better capitalize on the marketing opportunity by connecting all the locations, vehicles, stunts and situations to the Bond movies that inspired them.
— By Scott Hettrick