Now pay attention, 007. The UK’s ITV and ITVX television channels are holding a James Bond movie bonanza during March.
All 25 official 007 films are being screened on ITV during this month, starting on Monday, 4th March, with Goldfinger screened on ITV4, and then each movie will be available on ITVX for 30 days after transmission.
The first week of the special Bond month will feature at least one movie from all the first five lead Bond actors: Goldfinger (Connery), will be followed by On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Lazenby) on Tuesday, 5th March, The Spy Who Loved Me (Moore) on Wednesday 6th March, Licence to Kill (Dalton) on Thursday, 7th March, and Goldeneye (Brosnan) on Friday, 8th March, 2024.
The special Bond documentaries Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007, and Being James Bond: The Daniel Craig Story, are also available to watch on ITVX.
The ITV channel in Britain has been the home of the official 007 movies since the very first UK television screening was made in 1975 (of Dr. No). Interestingly, the first Roger Moore Bond adventure, Live and Let Die, still holds the record for the most number of homes viewing a Bond screening on British TV, with an astonishing 23.5 million homes tuning in to see Roger in action when it was screened in January, 1980.
James Bond film screenings also became, for many years, a bit of a Christmas tradition in Britain, and each new TV premiere of a Bond movie was often seen as a ‘big event’ and given considerable media publicity. Unfortunately, for dedicated Bond fans, ITV’s treatment of the Bond films over the years had led to very mixed feelings: ITV censors have often edited and pruned the 007 films and on numerous occasions the edits have been so severe and nonsensical that key plot points have been lost. It remains to be seen whether this ‘editing’ obsession will be in evidence for this month’s ITV Bond bonanza.
