50 years of Bond Cars: a Top Gear Special, BBC Two, review — telegraph.co.uk

With their mutual fondness for high octane thrills, one suspects that – Alan Partridge aside, perhaps – no-one adores James Bond quite as much as the Top Gear team. So, who better than them to have curated this affectionate, entertaining overview of Bond’s cars to coincide with the release of new movie Skyfall, and the 50th anniversary of the film franchise based on Ian Fleming’s spy books. Rather than seek to rank the cars, the programme took a cheerful joyride through Bond’s best driving-related moments, from the first use of gadgets in Goldfinger, to a sneak preview of a perilous rooftop chase sequence in Skyfall. Vintage clips were interspersed with interviews – with stunt men, directors, and Bond actors Daniel Craig and Roger Moore. Craig seemed as clinical and dry as his Bond incarnation, but with Moore we got a sense of the joie de vivre of working on those camp, silly Bond films from the Seventies and early Eighties.

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