8. Faithful Adaptations of Ian Fleming's Novels
The Bond series has taken much inspiration from Ian Fleming's original novels, and the early Connery films such, as
Dr. No and
From Russia With Love, were more faithful to Fleming's espionage based thrillers. But as the Connery films progressed, the series became a genre on to itself and by the time the Roger Moore era began, the films didn't bare a lot of resemblance to their literary counterparts. One direction this series could go, and I think maybe the best direction, would be to faithfully adapt several of Fleming's novels, such as
Moonraker or
Diamonds Are Forever, that didn't get a faithful treatment the first time. In the novel
Moonraker, Hugo Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale in the 1979 Moore film, had no interest in killing everyone on earth with probes from a giant space station in order to re-populate the earth with those he thought worthy. He was a Nazi who wanted to destroy London with a nuclear weapon, in revenge for World War II- and also plans to play the stock market in order to make a fortune off the disaster. While it doesn't have the
Star Wars inspired fights the film had, it's an exciting enough tale to adapt for a two hour episode. It also has a heart breaking ending, in which Bond discovers that Gala Brand, the agent he teamed up with to stop Drax, is engaged to be married. It's the type of ending Fleming did beautifully-Bond falls in love with a woman, only to lose her. Since it remains to be seen whether the Bond producers will ever try to do any remakes of the previous Bond films, a TV series could also do modern updates of
From Russia With Love or
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, similar to how 2006's
Casino Royale was a modern update of Fleming's 1953 novel. And if the TV series needs a recurring villain, it needs to look no further than...
7. Ernst Stavro Blofeld
If James Bond can ever be said to have had an arch nemesis, it'd be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, leader of the global criminal organization SPECTRE. He first appeared in the novel
Thunderball and later in
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where, just as in the film, he is responsible for the death of Bond's wife Tracy. In the next novel,
You Only Live Twice, Bond gets his revenge on Blofeld while on a mission in Japan, concluding the Blofeld trilogy. Unfortunately, after the the film version of
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in the next film,
Diamonds Are Forever, Tracy's death is only vaguely mentioned and we never get a sense of Bond's hatred for Blofeld or his need for revenge. It didn't help that in that film, Bond and Blofeld were played Sean Connery and Charles Gray, whereas in the previous film they were played by George Lazenby and Telly Savalas. If the Bond producers don't want to bring Blofeld back in to the film universe, a TV series could be a perfect place to slowly tease out who Blofeld is, similar to the early Connery films, and ideally, give him a better send off than being sent down a smokestack as he was in the pre-title sequence of
For Your Eyes Only. Also, when the films were being made,
You Only Live Twice was made before
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, leading to a continuity error regarding Blofeld not recognizing Bond even though they met face to face in the previous film. If done faithfully, in the TV series
On Her Majesty's Secret Service will precede the
You Only Live Twice plotline, and we'll get to see Bond get his revenge in that adaptation.
6. Bring in New Fans
While the Bond series has garnered several generations of fans, there's no doubt a lot of people who still haven't yet caught Bond fever. A weekly series could just be the thing to create new fans in between films. It would be great if the TV series is closer in tone to Fleming's novels, since people don't always know how the character of Bond and his world was originally conceived in the original novels. Having Bond fans originate from watching a TV series could be a
MASH or
The Odd Couple situation, where the TV interpretations of the films continued their legacy. While the Bond film series isn't ending any time soon, it doesn't hurt to have some back up if there's ever a sizable gap in making the films.