On Her Majesty's Secret Service

OHMSS was the best Bond movie since Dr No. The story was different and unusual and allowed you to see a different side of Bond never portrayed before or since. George Lazenby had to play Bond as a more romantic, caring person who for the first time had loved, married and lost the only true love he ever had. The character of Bond was very different as was the story if Lazenby was giving a standard Bond story he may have faired better. Lazenby was a good Bond who had to play the role differently because the story required him to do so. It is a shame he had to follow Sean Connery that would be a hard act for anyone to follow. 

OHMSS has one of the best Bond stories of all time. Certainly better than the Casino Royal and Quantum of Solace which has none of the style of many of the previous films. The books were good though. 
 
According to the Virgin EPG OHMSS is not in HD.
But the Radio Times lists it as HD.

Previous mistakes by the RT would lead me to believe the broadcast will not be HD
 
The Avengers was a follow on from Police Surgeon with Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee and that started in 1960 and The Avengers was born from the fact that Hendry naffed off to do films so Macnee was promoted
 
I was listening to a movie reviews podcast today and the reviewer commented on the snow chase in 'Inception' and compared it with the Bond films!
 
Name any other episode that has similar content.
Thats the only episode of The Saint where it could be called a fantasy.

TowarRAB the latter end of the colour series there was another one that was also slightly off the wall but the other 116 were firmly based in reality , even the one with the Loch Ness Monster

I generally discard the inferior colour era that ITV4 show constantly.
The 71 B&W episodes are all much better and they are all reality based
 
So does RT but previous discrepancies have always been reported correctly by Sky/Virgin which points to the mags assembled a couple of weeks ago being given the wrong info.

I'd love to see some of it in HD but the Virgin guide is quite clear and the Columbo before it IS in HD .

Anyone got a Sky box to check . My HD box is unplugged
 
According to my SkyHD box EPG, OHMSS is not orange in colour, meaning that it will be upscaled to 1080i, and not native HD. But that will still be better than you've ever seen it before...
 
its on now, im reminded of how bad poor George is lol. Just goes to show, Connery showed a lot that not just anyone can do in this role
 
As evidenced on this thread, most people think George was actually the right man but was unappreciated at the time. What was worse was Connery's phoned in performance in DAF.
 
No it won't.
Unless the print they use is better than the restored dvd the quality won't be even close on ITV HD to the dvd

But it was nice to hear the original mono mix again as the surround remix on the dvd has the levels between music and sound effects/ dialogue all wrong in many places





As mentioned earlier it was a foregone conclusion that ITV would not show it in 2.35:1 .
Broadcasts in that ratio are very rare on ITV and certainly would never be shown before 1030pm.

I missed the start so didn't see if the knife to the throat shot was left in.
But the print was not only in the wrong ratio it was not very good and was definitely ITV's older print and not sourced from the restored master used for the dvd UE.

And it wasn't in HD either.

Very abrupt break after the safecracking scene didn't surprise me as when Bond walks from the office to the lift he is looking at the Playboy centrefold be has taken and the keen eyed viewer can spot a bit more detail of the pinup than was perhaps intended so ITV seemed to play it safe.
 
Brosnan gets unfairly shafted sometimes - he was a good Bond IMO, Goldeneye was great, in fact his first 3 BonRAB were solid thrillers - only Die Another Day is poor.
 
without wishing to spoil the OHMSS appreciation society that is going on, I'm afraid to say I've never liked it. I've seen it three times over the course of about 20 years and each time I half expect to have some kind of epiphany and think it is a classic but it never happens.

Lazenby isn't much of an actor and he seems to spend more time speaking with George Baker's voice than he does with his own. It is a very long film and feels long as well as there is no pacing as such with all the action loaded into the final hour. The music is excellent, the ski chase is tremendous but other than that I can take it or leave it. And whoever decided to blast in with the usual Bond music after Tracy's death rather than using "we have all the time in the world" should have been shot.

It certainly isn't a bad film and there are no end of Bond movies that are worse than it but it wouldn't be in my half-dozen favourites I'm afraid.
 
Always useful to dispute something then offer nothing as an alternative:rolleyes:

Strange that all The Avengers documentaries and books clarify that it's true.

What's mythical about it?

Hendry was a well known drunk so he was basically allowed to leave the show and different partners started to appear.

Hendry was the star of Police Surgeon but ABC Head of Drama did not like the show but liked Hendry so retained him for The Avengers while scrapping the mundane Police Surgeon
 
Until Casino Royale, it was by far and away my favourite Bond movie - by a mile. And it works because of, not in spite of, George Lazenby. It is extremely well-acted, superbly scripted and has arguably the best score of any Bond film (but You Only Live Twice's score probably ties with it). A magnificent movie, dreadfully underrated for far too long. Of course, the major reason it works is because it is the closest film to the original Ian Fleming novel (closer even than From Russia With Love).

It's a shame we don't have the Blu Ray yet. But I downloaded it from iTunes recently and it looks near HD quality on an iPad. Splendid stuff!
 
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