User Reviews

It's all about the Bone Brothers, these fellas should have their own show.

The Asian husband was a pathetic specimen of a man, making his poor wife do everything and showing her zero respect... a real joke of a man.

For those Bond purests, leaving 1/10 reviews, what did you expect? You do know that the films are fictional right? You can't actually do that fake stuff for real?

All in all a fun watch, with some great challenges, and I hope we get a season 2.

I just wish the Bone Brothers could come back.

Great work from Brian Cox too, such a great actor to get in a show like this, he was just missing a white cat on his lap.

I'm a long time Bond fan. I've watched all the films multiple times and probably know more than most about the Bond universe. I think the 1* reviews of this are harsh, especially from those that just watched the first 20 minutes of episode 1 and made a snap judgment.

The good points I would say are the fantastic locations and scenery, some interesting (if staged) challenges, tricky questions that me and my family enjoyed thinking through, Brian Cox is always good value and some interesting background is given to the lives of the contestants.

Bad points, it is very staged and highly edited and that's undeniable. They've clearly cut hours worth of health and safety/ equipment briefings before the set pieces and there's just a lot of production that we're not seeing. There's no sense of real jeopardy to the stunts (e.g. The crocodiles were clearly tied up) and their attempts to suggest otherwise are undermined.

Whilst there's some nice use of Bond theme music featured in many of the movies, I do think they could have made more of the locations from a Bond sense as many were iconic. It might have been nice if the contestants had some Bond knowledge perhaps and could have referenced or if the questions could have been more Bond orientated.

Despite the negatives I still think there's value in giving this look on a Tuesday night when there's nothing else on kind of way. People are so quick to criticise and to anger these days. Just enjoy it as a piece of fluff in full knowledge that this is all it is because sometimes that's okay!

First, do not access this television series thinking that it has something/anything to do with the 007 franchise. You will be sorely disappointed. I sat through an advance preview of the first two episodes of this "reality" series expecting a television-sized Bond to engage in the espionage for which he is famous. Again, no.

Nine pairs of "everyday" blokes hunt for clues that, if answered correctly, in the end will reward them with one million English pounds. The conceit here, and the element that requires substantial viewer suspension of disbelief, is that each duo is supposed to be in the wilderness (or on a mountain top; or along the canals of Venice) isolated from assistance (other than the disembodied voice of Brian Cox), even though each couple is accompanied by, at a minimum, a cameraman, a sound engineer and a segment director.

Each couple is required to maintain the illusion that they are alone, even though alternating camera angles make it obvious that "scenes" had to be paused while the camera changed perspective. There is a grating understanding that the audience (you and me) are being manipulated and condescended to - "play along. Pretend its real". No, thank you.

I've watched the eight episodes of 007: Road to a Million and i have mixed feelings about the show.

I knew what i was about to whatch. I knew going in it was going to be a James Bond themed reality-show. So no surprise here.

I'm a reality-shows enthusiast, and i've watched the whole Janmes Bond collection (and some JB movies more than once). So i was eager to start binging.

First, the cinematography, the visuals with all the panoramic, aerial shots were just fantastic. I loved the intro, and the Bond tunes throughout the episodes.

That's the really positive thing about the show.

On the other hand, what i thought was no so positive was the "competition" side. At first it was a bit strange to see a contestants filmed with "movie cameras" insted of "TV cameras". But after some time you adapt, and it becomes normal. What i thought was a bit underwhelming, was the slow pace of the "competition" segments, and the fact that each team of contestants were on separate journeys and didn't even know about each other. And by extension, didn't compete against one another.

I was like "ok... that's a concept let's see if it works...". Unfortunately i don't think it did overall...

The people who filmed and created this show are movie professionals. They did what they know how to do. Film locations and actions sequences beautifully, coach contestants like they were actors etc.. But watching the show they obviously didn't know how to do TV per se...

Therefore, they did the bare minimum regarding the competiton element, and kept it super simple wwith teams of contestants not interacting with each other, and send each of them on separate journeys. Ok, but if you do that, it's going to be difficult to keep a high level of interest from the viewers if even the "action segments" are slow paced, and the only drama/suspenseful moments you can rely on are those with the host waiting 3 hours to tell the contestants whether their answers are correct or not. That's a bit light i think...

I hope the producers will change (or at least tweak) the concept of the show for an eventual season 2. Like ditching the quizz (please... the quizz stuff is just...lame), like hiring several TV producers/crews, and embracing the competition aspect (whitch is the essence of any real drama based reality-tv show really).

I'm not talking about contestants doing hand-to-hand combat or anything. But something like teams of two competiting in the same country (in different locations perhaps) , at the same time, on the same (or similar) type of James Bond movies based or inspired challenges (physical or mental). And the team who did the worst will not get to move on to the next country and the next set of challenges, or will get some sort of penality for exemple. I don't know... something like that... I'm not a movie/tv producer but i feel like this would be a major improvement from season 1.

And also, i may be wrong but i felt like very few of the contestants knew they were on a JB themed show. If i recall correctly, only the Bone brothers made a reference to JB when they had to retrieved their briefcase underwater, and one of them suggested that the 3 digits code for the padlock could be 007. But beside them, no one made any mention of James Bond.

I don't know... if i sat in the Aston Martin DB5 (or a replica of course) featured in Goldfinger, Thunderball or No Time to Die... i wouldn't know what to do with myself... Seriously.

If i was flown to Italy, and walked on the Gravina bridge where of one of greatest JB action sequences took place... i would freak the eff out. Hahaha... And that, just to name a couple of the several JB related things that were referenced during the show. But the contestant didn't seem to react to any of them.

Of course, not everyone is a movie buff, and not everyone have seen all the JB movies... i get it. But it wouldn't be a bad thing to encourage the contestants of a James Bond themed reality-show to actually watch some James Bond movies before filming the show. Just to have some sort of reactions during the show. I'm just saying...

Anyway... i really enjoyed some aspects of 007: Road to a Million but i felt that it could have been soooooooooo much better. So i think 6 stars is about right.

Overall, I enjoyed this reality show a lot. It was engaging, suspenseful, and fun. But that includes me doing me a lot of fast forwarding through overly drawn out trials and some of the emotional backstory stuff.

The challenges were interesting (although I have complaints - see below). The contestants were likable, not annoying as in some other reality shows.

Not closely connected to James Bond, overall. This is basically a global scavenger hunt and trivia quiz, along with some physical challenges. But Bond music from recent movies plays in the background throughout, which I enjoyed and thought it added atmosphere. And the exotic locales were interesting.

(Mild spoilers follow this, with critiques:) I thought the challenges toward the end were too hard. Some required skills the people just didn't have. Other things were basically pure luck, because no one would know the answers to those questions. By the last few episodes, I was rooting for all the remaining people and would have liked them to have a more realistic chance than they got.

Also, one of the challenges was apparently just plain dangerous. So I would have liked some explanation for why the show would put people in danger of their lives - without that, I kind of hated the show's producers for it.

The "controller" guy was fairly annoying, which I guess works since he serves as a villain.

Wasn't quite sure what I was watching when I started this and now I've watched all the episodes I'm still not entirely sure. The Bones bros were absorbing to watch and without them I'm not sure I'd have stuck around.

What this is missing is a "how we made this" feature because I have many questions! The contestants were seemingly put in very dangerous situations and we all know Bond had stuntmen to help him out... Scenes were obviously set up but there were so many story gaps between A and B it started to be annoying. And I doubt this is the most environmentally friendly programme possible given explosions in the snow, hacking through jungle and (I assume!) multiple international flights? That made it feel somewhat dated and out of touch.

There were bits of this that worked really well but the way it was edited felt off. Some contestants had the screen time to develop character and connection with viewer but others didn't, some element of interaction or competition with each other would have worked better, particularly towards the end. The shooting thing didn't make a lot of sense and felt unfair, as a viewer you wanted contestants to have their shot through the questions not their literal shooting ability in the freezing cold.

I'd watch another series if they changed the format and invested a bit more in viewer experience, rather than just chopping up what they thought were the interesting bits and leaving the rest in the cutting room.