Creative license to thrill, this was a masterful miniseries.

I can't remember the line verbatim ... something like "Everything I wrote was based on precedent." The intended motif for "Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond", the style and tone, was to sense the echo of the Sean Connery classics. If you noticed, the score had the 3-note signature of the Bond theme imbued.

In reality, the films are the echo of the real man. I haven't read any threads as to how much of this 'entertainment' was fabricated. The finale touched on that, tongue in cheek, when Monday asked "How much of it really happened?" And Ian admits, "Some of it was exaggerated a bit."

You just have to admire the exquisite attention to detail (despite the quibbles). Loved the song selection and stylings of the famous hits of the day, particularly Stardust at the end. Meticulous costume and set design. Kudos to the score.

The cat and mouse dance between Fleming and Ann was sublime ... "I think I may have done something I will regret" and he goes off to find her. The near misses were painful to watch and at the same time brilliantly choreographed. The fireworks celebrating the end of the war was poetic -- the greater good momentarily eclipsing their love story recalling the famous Casablanca line, RIC: "It doesn't take much to see the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

If I smoked, I'd have a cigarette.