The Incomplete Guide to Live and Let Die and The Outlaws

In which James Bond battles a drug dealer and drug dealers are found among us all in a Bristol-set comedy.

Live and Let Die in 2024

It’s the dawn of a new Bond era. How does it hold up, looking back? asks Vanessa.

We are now halfway through the Prince Charles Cinema 2024 James Bond season, and I am slowly catching back up to my January promise to rewatch all movies before the end of 2024. You can read all of my previous reviews and judgements on cultural differences, realism, and lifestyle replication in our Substack archive.

Live and Let Die gives us smooth Roger Moore - without the wink wink nudge nudge of OHMSS. He had always been in contention for the role, but, after Connery was cast, took on The Saint, a series about a comparable rogue on the other side of the law. Live and Let Die’s opening tune by Wings is impactful for the first Moore outing (and there’s a great balalaika-shredding cover by Frank Turner, if you’re interested).

Babes and Blaxploitation

The film was heavily inspired by the emerging genre of blaxploitation movies. While it originated from black artists reclaiming their portrayals in the wake of the American civil rights movement - though it was not without criticism even then - Live and Let Die was still an English endeavour cashing in on this popularity. Interestingly, it somewhat lampshades this, with the main villain pretending to be a pimp-style drug lord for his scheme.

Our lead Bond girl suffers from this: Bond coerces the mononymous Solitaire to lose her virginity to him because he rigs her prophetic Tarot deck (yours for £80) after she initially forecasts they will eventually become lovers. Villainous Dr Kananaga batters her after finding out she has lost her virginity, and therefore her prophetic powers, claiming that when he took them from her, at least he would take care of her.

I haven’t even gotten to the racism of the Louisiana sheriff, or explored the awkwardness of Solitaire, a white woman, being an Obeahwoman. Today, this film would be broke, not woke. (1/5)

I’d like to buy the world a coke

In fact, Dr Kananga, aka Mr Big, was intent on initially giving his cocaine away for free, stoking addiction, and undercutting and ousting the existing drug-running mafia. Critics derided this plot as small potatoes, but nowadays the international drug trade is considered a major US security threat; this was also started with murder at the United Nations, so well worth investigating by spy agencies.

One of my pet peeves is the facial prosthetics Kananga used to impersonate Mr Big, which looked amateur compared to Marlon Brando in The Godfather just a year before. The farce goes even further, when Bond feeds Kananga a compressed gas bullet, and Kananga turns into a rubber doll that explodes. Compressed air is a danger to people, though, thankfully, I couldn’t turn up any instances of decompression within a person.

This caper teeters between realism and disbelief. (2/5)

This boat unintentionally completed a world record during filming! Credit: Karen Roe.

See ya later, alligator

Live and Let Die takes place primarily in New York City, New Orleans, and the fictional island San Monique (ably represented by Jamaica). For Bond, however, it starts in a very nice London bachelor pad (precise location unknown, but inspired by the neighbourhood Ian Fleming lived in). Outfitted with the latest household white goods, today’s cheapest equivalent of the espresso maker would set you back €699 (or £590).

NOLA’s vibes are captured well, with the Olympia Brass Band showing off the typical jazz funerals, for instance. Should you see one of these, you can just join in, no charge. Driving through NYC’s Central Park with a cab also wouldn’t cost you $20 - you just can’t do that any longer, which I feel improves its atmosphere. Should you be in Jamaica (where Dr No was also filmed), you can visit the “Louisiana” alligator farm, originally owned by one Ross Kananga(!) for just over $30 per adult and under $18 per child in Falmouth.

On a final note, Bond and Solitaire ride the train north from Louisiana (as cheap as £90 today). He should know better, after what happened in From Russia with Love, but maybe that’s where the continuity stops - after all, he also faces train trouble in Spectre. In terms of travel affordability, you don’t need to make a killing - just don’t expect to compete in the London housing market. (3/5)

Live and Let Live

As mentioned in Diamonds Are Forever, we have entered the slapstick era of Bond. Moore is a convincing seducer, less a thug, and somewhat of a spy. His sequel, The Man with the Golden Gun was already secured, and for me, is much more anticipated in this rewatch, as it pulls acting heavyweight Christopher Lee into the orbit of Bond. Live and Let Die is campy fun, with the eerie Baron Samedi seeing us off, but the nostalgia can’t distract from a bit of a let down of a movie. (2/5)

The Outlaws

Despite best efforts, this piece includes spoilers for Series 1 and 2, but in my defence, those aired in 2022 and 2023, warns Elliot.

The Outlaws’ third series has a couple of issues, even if we ignore the fact that it’s been a scheduling football (thanks to the Euros, the third series has not enjoyed a consistent time slot on BBC1, but maybe we can ignore that in the modern day, seeing as so many shows land on BBC iPlayer as full box sets).

Firstly, this time there are only five episodes - something we can put down to budget. Secondly, due to the actors’ strike, Christopher Walken is sadly and somewhat conspicuously absent (down to filming Dune: Part Two and actor strike-induced unavailability). Thirdly, the second series had quite a big ending, so the show’s continuation, whilst welcome, isn’t entirely organic.

This is all nitpicking: The Outlaws’ third series is a lot of fun. Even more farcical, yet grittier than the first two outings. The comedy farce about the community service workers-turned criminal empire runners is back, and it's even pacier and full of chaos than the first two series. Aside from the absent Christopher Walken, everyone is back and some of their roles are more beefed up this time, with many story strands facilitating a fantastic array of comedy characters.

Stephen Merchant and Elgin James’ BBC/Prime Video series offers pure joy and shockingly intense drama at the same time. Elgin James was a former gang-member himself and brings authenticity to the scripts. Each hour-long episode has so much packed into them, it’s surprising and quite an erudite decision to make them the comedies into hours rather than half-hours so that every character gets a lot of time to progress each of their plots and character arcs, flipping on a dime between comedy and tragedy.

If you haven’t seen the first two serieses, The Outlaws follows a group undertaking community service, initially led by Stephen Merchant, Rhianne Barreto, Darren Boyd, Gamba Cole, Jessica Gunning, Clare Perkins, Eleanor Tomlinson, and Charles Babalola. The cast of supporting characters and guest characters who ascend casting rankings brings the show’s scale to Game of Thrones level so I won’t mention them all here.

When a few of the cash-desperate members of the group accidentally find a bag of money in the community centre that they’re renovating, the whole gang accidentally find themselves implicated in the inner workings of a criminal empire and have to become drug dealers to save their lives.

Third time’s the charm

Series 3 sees the implication of their reverse heist on drug lord The Dean (played with delicious menace by Claes Bang) from the end of series 2 and the evolution of each character trying to cope with the consequences of their valiant efforts to live beyond the law for the greater good - I’m desperately trying to avoid spoilers. Rani returns to Bristol with a dead body, and the group have to help her as the murder has consequences for the group’s capacity to be free from The Dean and his enduring influence.

Highlights from the third series include a subplot involving Lady Gabby (Tomlinson) suing her father (Richard E Grant, on fine form), John (Boyd) becoming an Uber driver to survive a divorce, and Diane (Gunning) getting a protégé in Stan, (Harry Trevaldwyn). It all culminates

Sometimes some of the less interesting stuff, like Diane’s obsession with DS Lucy Haines (Grace Calder), gets overdone, and the reduced episode count sees some of the plot rushed through. It’s been six months since we last saw them all but they all seem to have had a lot going on in that time, the summaries of that in-between time are a bit rushed.

The consequence of all this is five episodes that fluctuate from chaos and farce to deep-seated legal drama to detective drama quite quickly. This isn’t to say things are tonally inconsistent, and realism is only compromised occasionally for the sake of speeding the plot or allowing some delightful physical comedy worthy of The Chuckle Brothers at times.

Sometimes a show continues beyond its obvious natural end, which series 2 clearly is and was - the first two series were filmed back to back when the second run was commissioned during production, a real rarity! Series 3 does feel like a big end, (with one of the funniest finales you’ll ever see) and it’ll be a shame to not spend any more time with this lot.

The Outlaws is on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Prime Video internationally

An Incomplete List of Successful Recasts

Since opinions are easily split on Bond actors, why don’t we look at cases where hiring a new actor for an old role was a raging success. To avoid the obvious, we won’t include the posterboy for this scenario, Michael J Fox, because we haven’t seen the public footage of Eric Stoltz in the same way as those that follow - no, our self-imposed purity means that we only count those who signed up for a sequel, or following pilot purchases.

1. Don Cheadle from Terrence Howard as War Machine in the MCU

Terrence couldn’t do the simple maths, that demanding more money than the newly-successful protagonist Robert Downey Junior was getting, wasn’t mathing for the studio. Character actor Don Cheadle, on the other hand, could cash another Ocean’s-style check with the work that will see his family through an easy retirement.

2. Maggie Gyllenhaal from Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes in Nolan’s Batman trilogy

To be honest, Katie did a fine job, but she turned down the sequel in favour of a box office flop called Mad Money, which may have still been a good decision for personal reasons. But Maggie really sold the loss of the coin toss, after building a bit of an inner grit to the character, despite Nolan’s famous inability to write women.

3. Michiel Huisman from Ed Skrein as Daario Neharis in Game of Thrones

Ed Skrein is very good at playing bad people, but Daario needs to charm Dany’s horsehair pants off of her, so the recasting was appropriate. Particularly as the Westerosi world was becoming more and more desaturated, and a pretty boy with dyed hair wasn’t going to fit in so well.

4. Melissa McCarthy from Alex Borstein as Sookie St James in Gilmore Girls

The bristly nature inherent to Alex, which she just can’t shake, is what makes her so great in the other Sherman-Palladino show, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, as Susie Myerson, while this was Melissa’s opportunity to shine with prop and physical comedy, leading to earned further sitcoms and a leading-lady movie career.

5. Mads Mikkelsen from Johnny Depp as Gelert Grindelwald in the Wizarding World

Nobody needed as many movies in this series as were made, but ditching the eccentricity of Johnny Depp’s portrayal (particularly after the backstab of using the superb Colin Farrell in the first film) was the right move - especially after the PR uproar around his contentious split from wife Amber Heard - so in the third, and thankfully final, film, Mads grounds this performance to relative success.

Have you been watching comedy drug dealing on screen? Have you ever been recast by a campier version of yourself? Comment below!