Bond By Numbers

Hundreds of hours in the 007 podcast mines have led to innumerable highlights and five wonderful seasons of Bond by Numbers. Now our mission is coming to an end. In this, our 100th and final episode, we invite you to look back with us over the terrain of our assignment and share in the celebration of closing the BBN dossier.

Our final "What If?" show considers the wild ride that would have been if three of Pierce Brosnan's outings had been adapted in the Golden Age of Cinema! From pirate musicals to Marshall Plan extortion, we've got the craziness covered as we rewrite, recast and redesign Bond for the 1930's, 40's and 50's!

Pre-Title thrills are unique DNA for 007 films. Without them, it's hard to imagine the franchise as we do. In this episode, we resurrect our "rank-a-thon" from its slumber and try to calculate a clean line through all the Bondian preludes.

Our final selection for the "3 Non Bonds" festival is the WW2 thriller, "Eye of the Needle" from 1981. Donald Sutherland stars as Faber, aka "the Needle", Hitler's premiere stiletto-wielding spy in England, who is racing to deliver news of the imminent Normandy invasion. But complications arise when he's thrown off course as he tries to flee and ends up shipwrecked on Storm Island. There he meets an estranged couple, Lucy and David (Kate Nelligan and Christopher Cassenove) who stand in his way of completing the job. Directed by Richard Marquand (who earned George Lucas' respect and the seat on "Return of the Jedi" for his sharp work here), "Eye of the Needle" is governed by a cool, quiet confidence and boasts some strong performances and memorable locations. But will it pass the triple-agent scoring? Grab your anoraks and step on-board with us to find out - the good ship BBN takes one final voyage in Non-Bond waters!

After bringing us Ronin, The Quiller Memorandum and The Bourne Identity in previous years, 00-Chapman returns to the "3-Non Bonds" stage for one final showcase. This time, Harry Saltzman's 1965 thriller, The Ipcress File, is under investigation. Deemed by some an "anti-Bond" film for its calculated, artistic economy and unlikely hero, this jazzy spy thriller nevertheless had a good helping of James Bond talent behind the camera. The creative fingerprints of Ken Adam, John Barry, Peter Hunt and Norman Wanstall are all on show throughout this Michael Caine caper, set amidst the cool gloom of a not-yet swinging London.

The John Gardner sweep continues with "Win, Lose or Die", the eighth continuation novel from his cycle of Bond adventures. With this story, Gardner keeps on trend-jumping, here drawing inspiration from the "Top Gun" and "Iron Eagle" craze of the era. Bond returns to the Navy, upgrades to Captain and plays War Games with some very important dignitaries in order to defend a top-secret Steward's Meeting from a new terrorist threat. So grab your aviators and fire up the After Burner Arcade, we're flying back to 1989 for one final wild ride of the decade!

It's that time of year again, Bond fans - the festive quizzing challenge! This time, 00-Taylor and 00-Chapman face their toughest opponent yet: a 100-point quiz, blending Bond, Christmas and beyond. So, buff the wassail bowl and decorate your Douglas Firs, BBN's fourth and final Holiday Special is ready for action!

Josh and Scott add their thoughts to the chorus of reviews and unpack the recent Amazon original production. The quizzical, the critical and the admirable - all angles covered en route to a verdict about this Bond-inspired reality game show.

The concluding installment of our "What If?" episode on (very) unofficial Alternate Endings. From caviar blockades to Gobinda's betrayal, the remorseless roulette guides us through discussions of the remaining dozen films. Foolishness abounds, listeners advised!

What happens when you mix a “mad love of country with an equally mad indifference to life”? Well, if Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 thriller is anything to go by, a crackpot peace movement and a nest of horrid spies, that's what!"What's Going On?" Bond fans! Our annual 3 Non Bonds film festival gets underway for the fourth and final time with Josh's selection of Hitchcock's international spy caper. Joel McCrea, Laraine Day and Herbert Marshall star in this curious yarn of war-time espionage, family secrets and romantic pursuit which showcases several features of the Bond formula in early form.

In the first "What If" of its final season, BBN explores some (very) unofficial alternate endings. Led by the punishing whimsy of roulette and dice, Part 1 throws canon to the wind in presenting absurdist possibilities for reshaping thirteen of Bond's 25 official endings.

From a post 9/11 framework, some could read John Gardner's seventh Bond adventure as chilling and prophetic. In the year of its publication, however, Scorpius aimed for and hit a lot of contemporary targets. From growing world terrorism to the microchip's boom; from satanic panic to luxury golf resorts, this outing sees M throw Bond into a complex web of inter-agency activity and exceedingly heavy stakes. Scott and Josh talk through the novel as they take another look down the literary gunbarrel.

A half-century ago, Roger Moore sauntered across the screen in his first gunbarrel scene as James Bond. Live and Let Die started for him a highly successful 7-picture, 12-year run. In honour of its golden anniversary, we deemed it our duty to re-watch the 1973 film and meet to discuss its merits and maladies. What holds up like a cigar-smoking spinnaker and what deflates faster than Whisper's subterranean sofa? Join us for coffee and a light chat over Moore's inaugural outing.

It's been more than five years since all three co-hosts have been together in person. When the short-term stars align like that, shining down on a single postcode, it's definitely time to break out the celebratory fun and games. This episode shares some of that reunion. We could have gone to the cinema.... enjoyed a long dinner.... took in a concert or a ball game... but we played 007 Top Trumps instead! For better or worse, the ups and downs of our ridiculous card game are captured here in full. Good luck!

In John Gardner's sixth continuation novel, M has "cream cake" on his face and Bond is brought in to clean up the mess. Ghosts from a former operation have returned to haunt the MI6 chief as his agents are being mutilated and wiped out. Without the help of official channels, 007 must rely on his rolodex of allies to safeguard the targets and track down the hit team before it's too late. So, tune those harmonica bugs and call your gangster friends: from London to Ireland, Paris to Hong Kong, the stakes are high and set-pieces abound in this "help wanted" adventure!

Gardner's fifth Bond adventure sees 007 forced to jettison his annual leave in Europe when he's made aware of a SPECTRE contract on his head. Some of the bounty hunters hope to lure Bond in by kidnapping May and Moneypenny, two heart-shaped targets for the noble agent. Gardner diverts from his own formulaic structure in this one but still delivers the action and zaniness we've come to expect from his early adventures. Vampires and guillotines at the ready!

In the season finale, 00-Chapman brings our three-part "What If?" to an end by presenting his original idea for a Bond-related board game. Leaning cosily into the short-life starter genre, "Bonds of War" is a tabletop action card game overflowing with franchise characters and played over the swankiest desk imaginable! Competitive or collaborative, Jeff's explosive concept has something for almost every bond fan and is the only one of our ideas with expansion packs and collectable add-ons! Did somebody say, "kickstarter"?!

Our three-part tabletop extravaganza continues here with Josh's retro proposal: a Thunderball-inspired race to nuclear disarmament! Featuring all the thrills from the film but none of the water-logged drag, "BBN Games Thunderball" is 00-Taylor's loving tribute to the best of '60s adventure but with a contemporary flare. It'll strike the right chords with both Bond fans and game aficionados. Tick-tock-tick-tock... protect your Paula and get to Pinder's Warehouse before it's too late!

In this "What If?" episode (the first of three which will end our season), we introduce our fondness for table-top gaming and set the groundwork for our latest project: developing our own 007-inspired Board Games. Buy stock now! First up, "BBN: Dicefire" - a game of reckless rolling and canon-heavy confrontation!

Our exploration of John Gardner's Bond continues here as the literary gun-barrel sets its aim upon "Role of Honour" from 1984. Tech-heavy and mired in the world of computer sabotage, this title boasts more than a little ingredient inspiration for Roger Moore's swan song, "A View to a Kill", released the following year. Oh, and there's a blimp here, too! So, let loose your mooring cables and join us for a trip through this gravity-defying text as we cover surprise inheritances, Bond's Monte Carlo CPD, the lesser known "Battle of Endor" and everything in between!