Fleming: Licence To Stink

It has taken a few weeks but we have our firststone cold stinker of the year in Sky's much hyped Fleming. We all know Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels, but you get the idea this show wants to make sure we are never in doubt of the fact. So much so you get the feeling the makers would have liked a ticker tape along the bottom of the screen saying: HE WROTE THE JAMES BOND BOOKS.  

Dominic Cooper plays Ian Fleming with all the charisma of a damp tea towel as he seems to just breeze into a job at British Intelligence. Samuel West, as his boss, delivers the fantastic line : "Frankly you remind me of me." Which shows you the level of dialogue we had to endure. In fact the whole thing was so bad you could feel the viewing public's toes collectivelycurling. If you took away the furtive glances and lighting of cigarettes, there really wasn't much else going on in this opening episode. Ian Fleming wrote sharp, snappy thrillers this Fleming was the polar opposite.

I never thought it was possible but Fleming is even more flat-footed than Sky's other hyped up original drama Dracula. In fact most of Sky's domestic product has been pretty poor, but it seems to be the way they are going. Sky have lost coverage of lot of the big Premiereship matches and soon they will also lose the Champions League and we get laughable tosh like Fleming and Dracula in return. That's not what I'd call fair exchange.

Over