BBC Radio 4, April 20, 2025

A plan to discredit a Russian agent needs the Secret Service’s best gambler…

It’s three years since we last had one of these radio adaptations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories, and means that it’s now 17 years since Toby Stephens first played 007, making him one of the longest-running actors in any medium to portray the role. Ironically, we’ve gone from the very last Fleming novel to the very first, once again adapted by Archie Scottney. It pretty much completes the canon – Michael Jayston’s You Only Live Twice still stands as a good version, and The Spy Who Loved Me is only peripherally a Bond story.

It’s a shame then that the series doesn’t go out on a higher note. Fleming’s story begins with some of his most evocative descriptions, and I’d hoped to hear Martin Jarvis intoning those famous lines. Instead, we get a quite boring – if accurate – scene setting up the plot, something that really could and should have been incorporated into the main body of the play, if not purely rendered in reported speech. That would have allowed some atmosphere to develop in the all-important baccarat game, and also add to the development of Bond and Vesper’s relationship. Instead, it feels rather as if we just go from one plot point to the next, with a few added witticisms along the way (a flippant remark after the castration torture scene really doesn’t land). Hugh Bonneville’s Le Chiffre lacks something of the gravitas that the part needs, while Susannah Fielding’s Vesper comes into her own in the final act.

Verdict: Whether it’s seen as the first or last of these versions, unfortunately it’s the weakest. 6/10

Paul Simpson