007 on TV

 

‘BOND ON TELLY FOR 1^st TIME’ shouted my all-caps diary entry for Tuesday 28 October 1975. The film was, of course, Dr. No, and it went out on ITV at 8pm that evening, the most anticipated televisual event of the year. The TV Times celebrated with a cover featuring Sean Connery and Ursula Andress; the magazine had primed viewers a week early, with a four-page feature on the Bond phenomenon, which continued the following week by focusing on ‘The Gorgeous Girls of James Bond’ (well, it was 1975 after all…) On the listings page for Tuesday 28 October, Bond incongruously shared column inches with Crossroads, The Benny Hill Show and an advert targeting sufferers from back-ache...

Dr. No may have been thirteen years old, but its arrival on television was greeted as a media event. It seems curious, looking back, that ITV had chosen a Tuesday night for Bond’s TV debut – surely this was worthy of a Sunday evening, or even Christmas? Latterly, this would certainly be the case, but back in 1975, ITV was treading very carefully. The broadcaster had come under some pressure from cinema owners who feared a drop in takings when the still very popular film franchise made the transition to the small screen.

The ITV deal, reportedly costing £850,000, had been announced in the press as far back as January 1974, when it was hoped that the broadcasts would begin in September of that year. ITV initially denied the reports, claiming in The Stage that no such deal had been done. It was the Daily Mail that finally confirmed the story on 18 January 1974, sparking an immediate backlash from the cinema industry, with the result that Bond’s television debut would be deferred by a whole year, during which time the films were re-released to cinemas in a package of double bills. It was thanks to this round of cinema screenings that I got to see my first Bond movies in the summer of ‘74.

ITV’s contract allowed for each of the films in the initial package to be broadcast just twice, not exceeding two screenings within the space of one year. There was further controversy when it emerged that the Trident Television group, made up of the Yorkshire and Tyne Tees regions, was proposing to hike advertising rates during the Bond films from the standard £3,700 to £5,000 for a thirty second spot. This decision was reversed following intervention by the UK Price Commission, a body that had been set up by the Heath government under the Counter-Inflation Act of 1973.

From Russia With Love was the next Bond to find its way onto the small screen in May 1976 and this time was afforded the prestige of a Sunday evening slot, running from 7.55 until 10pm. The ITV screenings were all very well, but you had to put up with the commercial breaks, and the presentation on old school 4:3 format television was hardly comparable with what one saw in the cinema or on today’s widescreen transmissions. Most of the films were also trimmed slightly for violence. Compared to the high definition remasters that are used for today's broadcasts, the 1970s television Bonds would look quite crude to modern viewers, presented from 35mm physical film, complete with dirt, sparkle (dirt on the negative printed into the film) and occasional splices.

In line with their contractual agreement, ITV were able to show another Bond movie during 1976, and Goldfinger duly put in an appearance on Wednesday 3 November. These midweek screenings were most likely an appeasement to cinema owners, whose Saturday night turnover would have taken a hit with a competing Bond film on television. The following year brought Thunderball (Sunday 26 February) and You Only Live Twice (Sunday 20 November), whilst in 1978, ITV kicked off its autumn season with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on Monday 4 September, and hoped for a Christmas Day ratings winner with Diamonds Are Forever, which went out at 6.45pm. On this occasion, however, Bond failed to do the business, the BBC having countered with a blockbuster of their own: The Sound of Music was given its UK television debut at 4.20pm that afternoon, and Auntie won the ratings war hands down: even the might of Bond, Morecambe and Wise couldn’t compete with the combined talents of Julie Andrews, Mike Yarwood and Frank Spencer…

By now, the ITV Bonds were slowly catching up on the cinema releases. When the broadcasts began, back in 1975, Dr. No was over a decade old. Now the TV Bonds had reached the 1970s. Viewers would have to wait a year to see Live and Let Die, and when it premiered on ITV on Sunday 20 January 1980, an astonishing 23.5 million viewers were tuned in, a record audience for any film on UK television which has never been beaten. The year was topped and tailed by 007, and The Man With the Golden Gun was ITV’s Christmas Day offering. Roger Moore graced the cover of the double issue TV Times in a specially-comissioned photo shoot alongside Janet Brown (in character as Margaret Thatcher) and Morecambe and Wise. The film went out at 6.10pm, putting it up against Larry Grayson’s Generation Game and Dallas over on BBC1.

All this time, I’d been keeping up with the Bonds on their ITV premieres, but from Moonraker onwards, I took less of an interest. When The Spy Who Loved Me arrived on television on 28 March 1982, I was elsewhere (at a special screening of Avengers episodes, in fact). Moonraker was that year’s Christmas Day offering, just over three years on from its theatrical debut.

By now, I’d lost interest in the Bond franchise: Moonraker was the last of the series that I saw in a cinema, and it wasn't until much later that I caught up with Roger Moore’s last few films, by which time television screens had expanded to 16:9 allowing the movies to be shown in their original aspect ratios.

After an interregnum commencing in 2012 during which Sky owned broadcast rights, ITV began screening the Bonds again in 2022, to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the franchise. In all this time, Bond has only appeared once on BBC television, when From Russia With Love was shown on BBC2 (Sunday 29 July 2007) as part of a season celebrating British cinema.

Today, Bond is still a regular fixture on ITV, with the ‘classic’ era films (Connery-Moore) often appearing in weekend afternoon and late night seasons, and more recent entries going out in primetime slots. Following the broadcast of No Time to Die on New Year’s Day 2021, the TV Bonds finally caught up with the cinema releases. What happens next is anybody’s guess, with the franchise now in the hands of Amazon, although it is reported that ITV has done a deal to secure broadcast rights for the foreseeable future.

Movies on television are no longer quite the events they were half a century ago, when British viewers had only three channels to choose from, and most of today's blockbusters find their way to the small(ish) screen in a relatively short time – it's unthinkable that any film today would take thirteen years to make the transition from cinema to television, or that the TV premiere of any movie could cause such a stir as did James Bond back in 1975.