A Bond For All Seasons

Now that the holiday season is officially over (although they still have a bloody tree downstairs - i'm thinking of taking a chainsaw to it!), it seems only appropriate to mention that staple of the British Christmas TV (and i DON'T mean Morecambe and Wise, thank God). Of course, i'm talking about James Bond. Now, Christmas wouldn't be the same without at least three Bond films on (usually one on Christmas Eve, one on New Years Eve and somewhere in between as well) which is all well and good. But given that it isn't too much of a big thing over here (most of my American colleagues have seen the recent Bond films but very few of the earlier ones), i was wondering if they would be on at all (hey, i admit to being a bit fussy over films but at least with Bond, you know what to expect).

Well, thankfully (or not as the case may be), Spike TV - one of the many channels over here was holding a '8 days of 007 marathon' (they seem to LOVE having marathons of programmes over here - 36 hours of "24", 48 hours of "The Twilight Zone", 36 hours of "ER" were all on over the holiday period). Anyway, i was quite pleased by the prospect of seeing a couple of old Bonds that i've not seen or had time to watch for a while. Enter the American schedulers who, rather than do the logical things of, perhaps putting every Bond film on in order and having it on a permanent loop or whatever, they made the unusual decision of repeating the films from one day to the nextexcept shifting them back a couple of hours each time and adding a new one to the end. Thus, i ended up seeing snippets of "For Your Eyes Only" and "A View to a Kill" at least three days in a row. As is usually the case in these matters, i throw my hands up in the air and silently curse those in charge of TV.