Stream It Or Skip It: ‘007: Road To A Million’ on Prime Video, A Globetrotting Reality Competition With James Bond Movie Signifiers (And Brian Cox)

None of the competitors on 007: Road to a Million (Prime Video) are in the running to be the next James Bond. But while the producers of the legendary film series continue their search for a new 007 to replace Daniel Craig, they’ve authorized this reality competition, which pits nine pairs of players against challenges issued by Brian Cox (Succession‘s Logan Roy) as the kind of omniscient mastermind who might otherwise antagonize Bond on one of the superspy’s missions. On offer is a million pounds in prize money, which they’ll access by answering questions placed at sites spread across the globe. But the specter of answering correctly comes with its own cost. Road to a Million is single elimination, so if you guess wrong there’s no time to die another day.     

007: ROAD TO A MILLION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: With a familiar blast of Bond music fanfare, we open on an aerial shot of a sports car as it winds toward Gravina in southern Italy. The couple driving, Kamara and Josh, next find themselves standing on the picaresque town’s ancient Roman aqueduct. But it’s the looming, modern tower crane before them where their target lies.  

The Gist: There’s no centerpiece mansion in Road to a Million, no rose ceremonies, council meetings, or tenuous alliances forged around a champagne bar. Instead, two-person teams of contestants work independently of other players, guided on their quests by “the man” or “the voice” – which is Brian Cox as “The Controller.” In his silk ascot and articulated beard, Cox sits before a control panel with a bank of monitors. And when he phones the contestants, they must follow his cryptic prompts to discover a metal suitcase. (It actually looks more like something Ethan Hunt would be issued in the Mission: Impossible movies, but stay with us.) Inside is his question, which might be an elusive fact from history or include data that must be reasoned out. Get it right, and contestants continue to the next level of the game. Get it wrong, and The Controller strikes their names from his master list.

Early on we meet the Bone brothers, James and Joey from South London, as well as sisters and recent university grads Saiqa and Sana. Married couple Kamara and Josh are in the mix, plus nurses Beth and Jen, the father and son team of James and Sam, retired cops Keith and Nick, and various sets of friends including Grace and Daniela, Tanaka and James, and Danny and Colin. As The Controller says, the players represent “a cross-section of Britain today,” and for the most part they enter the competition with thoughts of comfort zone-challenging adventure and the hook of a life-changing monetary award. 

Now, 007: Road to a Million isn’t issuing its contestants Walther PPKs, white tuxedo coats, ball gowns, or Aston Martin DB5s. But it does deposit them in some very Bond-like locations, including the vast, mountainous Scottish Highlands, the canals and terra cotta villas of Venice, Chile’s Atacama Desert (that one’s straight outta the climax of Quantum of Solace), and the wild river landscapes of Jamaica. The difficulty of the questions increases as the levels continue, but so does the value attached to each correct answer. So who’s got the juice? The Controller wonders. “If you put ordinary people into a James Bond adventure, would they crumble? Or would some rise to the challenge, if given the right encouragement?”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The latest season of The Amazing Race premiered on CBS in September; that series featuring teams of two gallivanting across the earth to win a million bucks premiered way back in 2001. And given the way she nonchalantly swings Tom Sandoval over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes on the Fox reality comp Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, maybe JoJo Siwa should enquire with the Bond producers about a spot in their film universe.

Our Take: Sweeping and pristine aerial photography, the elegant Motoscafi water taxis of Venice, ancient aqueducts that resemble something some baddie might parkour their way off of, and the swirling mists and hidden mountain lochs of Scotland, where James Bond lore says the spy’s father was born: in its visuals, 007: Road to a Million certainly conjures the spirit of the iconic film series. Helping that connection along is the reality show’s title sequence and theme music, composed by frequent Bond composer David Arnold, which updates Monty Norman’s original theme. And Brian Cox’s performance as The Controller is enjoyably devious and even mildly sinister, managing to convey the weighty presence of a Bond villain on screen without doing much other than throwing a few toggle switches and speaking ominously through a telephone. Road to a Million was right to not have Cox’s Controller greet its contestants in person, the way a typical reality show host would. That he exists apart from them as an unseen manipulator goes a long way toward retaining the Bond movie mystique.

007: Road to a Million also needs every bit of all that to sell its premise, because without the Bond-derived window dressing, it’s just another pairs-based reality competition. Fortunately, inside of the Controller’s questions and challenges, there is some interesting interplay between its sets of contestants. Like watching James and Joey gingerly wrangle a live boa constrictor while bickering the way brothers do, or the dynamic between Kamara and Josh that both tests and reestablishes the couple’s trust in each other. Those moments illustrate how refreshingly uninterested Road to Million is in the manufactured dramas of the usual reality show format. But they’re largely external to the Bond stuff, beyond the location where they take place, the minor presence of proprietary tech, or the smoke grenades contestants trigger to signal their answer.

Sex and Skin: It’s the fetching location shoots and Q Branch-style gadgetry side of Bond that 007: Road to a Million is emulating, not the super spy’s propensity for finding the bedroom. 

Parting Shot: “For 25,000 pounds, you’ve selected answer ‘C,’” Brian Cox tells the Bone brothers in his Controller voice. “Your answer is…” and then 007: Road to a Million cuts to the title graphics and music. It’s a cliffhanger, folks, and while James and Joey survived and thrived on levels one and two of the game, there are seven pairs of players the show has yet to introduce.    

Sleeper Star: Single elimination stakes in reality competitions are always tough, especially when you scramble to the top of a mountain in Scotland only to falter at the moment of the first question. Will Saiqa and Sana’s sisterly bond and chill vibes be enough to see them through? 

Most Pilot-y Line: “The hares are running,” Brian Cox says of the contestants with his trademark gravitas and irresistible diction. “The only thing standing in their way…is me.” If playing The Controller in this series becomes a soft audition for Cox to enter the 007 films as the next supervillain – the actor admits he thought it was – then all the powers that Bond must do is listen to the way he pronounces “Loch.”   

Our Call: STREAM IT for the lingering sense that you’re entering the Bond universe. You aren’t – 007: Road to a Million is in many other ways just a conventional challenge-based reality show. But it makes the right moves to establish its Bond branding as a frame, and rejects much of the superficiality common to the genre.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.