Fleming

Fleming is the new 3 part dramatisation of Ian Fleming's life up to the writing of Casino Royale.  It opens with Fleming and his wife swimming in Jamaica, then returing to Goldeneye, for him to finish the manuscript.  In this first five minutes you had the two main problems: first it's showing off its big budget Bond-ness in a pointless (but beautiful) underwater scene, and then the final line, "The bitch is dead now" being typed out, clunk, clunk, clunk....

Ideally this would be like a 'wartime James Bond' - surely someone must have pitched this - but since Fleming wasn't Bond himself (Bond was more a composite of many agents that Fleming had met - Sydney Cotton, Fitzroy Maclean, Dusan Popov and others) instead we get a series that joins the major dramatic dots in Fleming's life, close to accounts like Andrew Lycett's Ian Fleming.

Acting and dialogue is fine within these parameters, and it's not for us to say TWNH, because these things did happen, but we can definitely say TWNH to scenes like Fleming walking into Admiral John Godfrey's office and giving an elevator pitch for two ideas in 30 seconds, one of which was Operation Mincemeat. 

Another problem is that Fleming wasn't likeable or even sympathetic, except maybe as an overshadowed younger brother.  The final problem is that it's just not very interesting or watchable. 

Fleming wasn't Bond, but was a genuine war hero, and there could have been a good, shorter drama if it had focussed on things like Mincemeat, but it's too concerned in showing the details of his personal life, while making visual nods to Bond at every opportunity.  We won't say  it's shaky and not stirring, we'll stick with it's a shame.