An Incomplete Guide to Diamonds are Forever and The Thick of It
In which Vanessa decides if Bond movies are forever (or at least contemporary), and Elliot does the same for Armando Ianucci’s work.
Diamonds are Forever in 2024
Diamonds may be forever, but which parts of this film crumbled under the pressure? asks Vanessa.
We are nearly half-way through the year, and the Prince Charles Cinema 2024 James Bond season progresses at the same pace. My series of reviews of all movies before the end of 2024 lags behind somewhat, however.
Diamonds are Forever is a return to the familiar, with Sean Connery returnings as James Bond two years after Lazenby’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. We see our old foe, Blofeld, in an old-but-new face, as Charles Gray (hello Dikko!) takes on the mantle.
We also have a stellar Bond theme: Diamonds Are Forever remains contemporary thanks to Kanye sampling it in Diamonds from Sierra Leone. Lyrically, it compares favourably to the nonsense of other Bond songs. This is far more sensuous and less commanding - though not less enthralling. We await Moonraker for her final outing, but return (mostly) to Earth for this plot.
Like diamonds in the sky
Starting the story off in the middle of a mission that reveals Blofeld has been creating doubles through plastic surgery, and then accepting that Bond killed the real villain signalled the intellectual nature of this movie from the start.
The diamond trade hasn’t changed much since 1971, though more countries are being mined nowadays (yes, this very unbiased, professional site only holds information until 2015, but that’s good enough for me). Using them for a laser on a satellite to destroy nuclear weapons seems far-fetched even by standards of the past though. It’s downright weird to watch Bond scrambling around a diamond smuggling caper from a Carry On film that turns out to be a weapon of mass destruction. Tonally, it’s all over the place.
What’s realistic now is the fake fingerprints to bypass security, and the voice modulator used to impersonate Willard Whyte. At this point, voice samples can recreate people reliably and cheaply with new LLMs. Thanks to AI, running scams from the small scale to Blofeld levels is no longer an impossibility. And this is only the beginning, oof! (1/5)
Welcome to Sin City
Diamonds are Forever, but they are not a girl’s best friend in this film. Tiffany Case, Plenty O’Toole, Bambi and Thumper are all sad examples of Bond Girls. They all feel like a regression after the competence of characters like Aki, the Japanese agent, or Pussy Galore, Bond’s foe-turned-bedfellow.
It does open an interesting avenue, in the homoerotic presentation of Mr Wint and Mr Kidd. It’s not judgmental of their affection for another - but they are weird in their own right, so not above mocking. On the other hand, stereotypes do not encompass the entire spectrum of non-heteronormative sexuality! It’s hard to say whether this is a win or not, but it’s certainly a sight to see Blofeld being blase about appearing in drag. (2/5)
Jetting and betting
To start with disappointment, if you’d planned on getting to Amsterdam via hovercraft, I’m so sorry, but that very real service was shuttered in 2000. We don’t spend much time in any locales outside of Las Vegas, so let’s move on swift(boat)ly.
Circus Circus still stands today, though you’d be hard-pressed to find the Flying Palucio or Zambora the Gorilla Girl now. It does, bizarrely, have a kids entertainment area. Don’t let having a family put you off gambling away your time and money! Bond, however, stays at the Tropicana, which can cost you £500 a night.
Finally, Bond and Case depart for Europe on the SS Canberra, where they have an explosive dinner (and no, they don’t contract norovirus, as far as we know). A while after serving in the Falkland Wars(!), P&O scrapped her, so their current cruise offering must be substituted. A balcony cabin costs £3,450, but we won’t need the outbound UK leg. Lady Luck better be on your side to pay that bill! (2/5)
Missing that polish
Diamonds are Forever is where James Bond, well, Mr Kidd and Mr Wint, really, gets camp. This is a tone we are unable to shake off until we leave Roger Moore behind - but we haven’t met him yet, and Moore’s is the joint longest Bond tenure with Sean Connery, so that may be a while yet.
It may have been a record breaker back in the day, and its sexism celebrated upon release, but its lustre has faded considerably in the intervening decades. Diamonds may be forever, but the appeal of this particular Bond outing is far from eternal. It might be fun, but it’s also extremely stupid. (2/5)
If you spotted a couple of songs and lyric fragments in this review, then your reward is a tiny playlist we put together on Spotify. May it be more enjoyable than Vanessa’s experience watching this film apparently was.
The Thick Of It in 2024
In which Elliot reflects on the second-best politics sitcom when real life has gone beyond parody.
I haven’t really watched much new stuff lately. I haven’t finished The Outlaws season 3 (BBC iPlayer) as I absolutely don’t want it to end. Needing something comfortable to watch in the background lately, something funny, silly, and something I knew, I accidentally rewatched the entirety of The Thick of It which, 12 years on from its ending, is still an alarmingly accurate masterpiece.
In 2004, UKTV Gold invited some well known comedians and critics and producers to argue about what Britain’s Best Sitcom was, and Armando Iannucci answered the call with Yes Minister, the wonderful satire on the power of civil servants over their supposed political masters. It didn’t win, but it did inspire Iannucci to try his hand at an updated, media spin-heavy version, based on Tony Blair’s seeming invulnerability in the media.
It got made because it was made for basically nothing, in some disused offices, with cheap cameras to make it look like a fly-on-the-wall documentary; The Office taken to the extreme. The first two series only had 3 episodes each, but they achieved enough notice to become something more. They’re small scale but the intensity of the camerawork and intimacy of the aggressive and authentic sweary language makes for a show that divides people with its horrible, but all-too-real characters dragging themselves around the corridors of power.
The pinnacle of the show is of course the specials, The Rise of the Nutters and Spinners and Losers, about the impending change of leadership, satirising the transition from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown. Real names are never used, but it’s clear who is an analogue of who in the show. The second Prime Minister we never meet, Tom, is designated as the leader of the ‘nutter’ wing of the party. One of the iconic moments from these specials includes the Newsnight interview of immigration minister, Ben Swain, played with outstandingly authentic ineptitude by Justin Edwards.
Honestly, watching it back, how many senior politicians from all sides have we seen give similar interviews since, to people less barky than Jeremy Paxman? However, the other thing I love about this scene is that despite the animosity between the SPADs, there’s also a genuine camaraderie at the end, in utter disbelief that they work for these people.
The two hours of chaos, as Malcolm Tucker tries to ensure he maintains power over the party regardless who eventually leads it and the country, are wonderfully farcical. On the other side, a centre-right politician, Peter Mannion (Roger Allam), has to cope with the changing communication style of his opposition party in the face of Stewart Pearson’s baffling guru language and desire for him to not wear a tie or consider not tucking a shirt in. The confrontations are over the stupidest things and amazingly little business of government ever gets done as they squabble about how to look good in a modern world that none of them understand.
Sturcture? What structure?
Series 3 sees Chris Langham’s hapless Hugh Abbott replaced by Rebecca Front as Nicola Murray at the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship (DoSAC). Nicola represents the end of New Labour: unable to do anything in the face of a recession, and unable to really convey ideas of her own. Series 3 is odd in that it isn’t odd. It’s a full series of 8 episodes.
The best episode (and highest rated on IMDB) sees Nicola Murray and Peter Mannion meeting in a 5Live studio, and all of their aides and communications people descending into pathetic chaos outside. The character dynamics are so well-played as the idiots eventually start to realise they have more in common despite being fuelled by their hatred of each other.
Series 4 is also odd. It mirrors the real-life change of government, with Peter Mannion now in DoSAC with a junior minister from their coalition partner party. Iannucci had joked that the idea of doing series 4 set in a parallel universe where the Lib Dems came to power had to be thrown out as they embraced the real-life madness. The series is also more serialised, and builds up to an hour-long episode where all of the characters answer to the Goulding Inquiry into the leaking of a suicide victim’s medical records.
It’s a direct mirror to 2011’s Leveson Inquiry into the illegal media practices, like phone hacking, that had become commonplace. It’s not quite as good as the previous seasons. Malcolm Tucker is still wonderfully machiavellian in his plotting to oust Nicola Murray from his party’s leadership, but the jokes do feel very specific to the coalition government and 2011 in general, so it’s not aged quite as well as the others.
Watching it again, there is so much comedy talent across the series. Chris Addison, Olivia Poulet, Will Smith (not that one), Paul Higgins, James Smith, Joanna Scanlan, just to name a few. A pre Horrible Histories Ben Willibond shows up as a gloriously horrible Evening Standard editor and later ministrial SPAD, Adam Kenyon. David Haig plays the absolutely deranged Steve Fleming in the series 3 two-part. But one of the best moments in the enitre series belongs to Tom Holland’s Cal ’The Fucker’ Richards (based on former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson), inspiring and launching the opposition’s election campaign:
Tell me you don’t feel sorry for Cal’s lack of option to shoot them all.
Politics has become absolutely absurd in recent years. Scandal after scandal and media management failure after calamity keep being responded to by the commentariat (forgive me for sounding like Dominic Cummings), with the dry phrase ‘this would be too implausible to be a Thick of It plotline!’.
However, it almost doesn’t matter what your politics going in is, the fact is, the deadpan and venomous insecurities of every character make for a tragic tale of the people pressured to make government work in a horrible media cycle. It’s probably for their own good that they haven’t made more, because real life will just try to ape it and make even less sense if it can.
Every episode of The Thick of It is on BBC iPlayer. Which is fine but look how neat the ‘ministerial boxset’ edition looks!
(and the DVD extras are properly good, there’s a whole bonus episode’s worth of content with Peter Mannion taking his PR guru, Stewart, hostage, which, let’s face it, is something that at least one candidate in this year’s election will definitely do)