By Will Barber Taylor

“Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.” So said Raymond Chandler – and it’s certainly true of Roger Moore. Friends, family and co-stars take part in this revealing and entertaining look at an iconic, stylish and very British actor.

With one eyebrow raised we follow his rollercoaster journey from shy London school boy to knitwear model to global TV heartthrob and his decade-defining role as James Bond. We reveal that the character of Roger Moore – the manner, the charisma, and self-deprecating humour – was his own creation and it took him to the height of fame and a jet-set lifestyle counting Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck and David Niven amongst his close pals.

His three children from his thirty-year relationship with Italian actress and wife number three Luisa Mattioli share never before seen home movie footage of the family and showbiz friends enjoying life in Switzerland and the South of France. Interviewees include Joan Collins, Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan, David Walliams and Christopher Walken.

Documentaries about any singular individual can be difficult to make. It can, especially with a film star with as precise a self-image as Roger Moore, be hard to separate the reality and the fiction. Moore’s image of him self as a star who could swan through life and look charming and sophisticated at all times belied the real struggles that beset his attempts to become an established actor. The image of Moore versus the real person who lay beneath is at the heart of this documentary and an admirable job is done in attempting to peel back the layers of Moore’s character to show the struggle that went into creating the image of Roger Moore.

Beginning with his early life in Britain and his first foray into acting as a toga clad extra, the documentary deftly portrays Moore’s journey from knitwear model to star of Ivanhoe, The Alaskans and Maverick aided by his second wife Dorothy Squire, whose obsession with Moore would later become a personal cross to bear on his career and life. The lack of children from the marriage and Moore’s career seemingly being confined to television was a disaster waiting to happen for the marriage with Moore eventually meeting and marrying Luisa Mattioli, a relationship that would prove to be the longest of his life.

The documentary’s main focus is of course on contrasting Moore with Bond and Bond and his time as Bond opens the documentary, provides it with its title and is the focus for many of the interviews with co stars from the films appearing throughout alongside Bond successor Pierce Brosnan and Barbara Broccoli, current producer of the Bond series. Moore’s role as Simon Templar in The Saint is given some screen time, shown mainly to illustrate its similarities to the Bond part and how it raised Moore’s career. Similarly, his turn as Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders! is covered though less fully than The Saint. The main contrast between The Saint and The Persuaders! namely that the latter was successfully shot on location as opposed to the often studio bound Saint is surprisingly overlooked but this is a single example of a persistent issue with the documentary.

Whilst the aim of the documentary is to go behind the scenes of Moore’s life, to provide an insight into the character of a super star that Moore created for himself, it fails to fully reconcile that with how glib the documentary often comes off as. To begin with, Steve Coogan’s narration in character as an impression of Moore feels oddly insincere. It does somewhat play into Moore’s love of comedy but at the same time it feels insincere as if the makers of the documentary are laughing at Moore rather than with him, trying their best to make jokes about him rather than explaining who he is.

It seems equally odd that the film that the actor prided himself most on, 1970’s The Man Who Haunted Himself, the one film Moore said he was able to truly act in is conspicuous by its absence. This is especially odd given that the core of the film is about a man dealing with a double of himself, plagued by a doppelgänger who seems intent on replacing him in his own life – surely a film ripe for comparison with Moore’s life, especially given the documentary’s premise that he in part manufactured an image for himself?

The same glibness feels applicable to David Walliams’ comment that of course Moore was married more than once, he had to “give other people a turn.” This coming in the segment of the film that deals with his divorce from Luisa Mattioli after thirty years of marriage feels insensitive to say the least; the at times fractious relationship between Moore and Mattioli is dealt with via anecdotes from various interviewees who knew both suggesting that Mattioli could at times be abusive towards Moore and that, towards the end of the marriage, he slept in a smaller bed than her’s underneath the stairs of their Swiss home. The revelation that Moore had separated from his wife because of a new relationship with mutual friend Kristina Tholstrup certainly, understandably, caused frictions between him and his children however this is also not especially explored in the documentary.

Coogan’s voice over somewhat joshing about Moore’s work with UNICEF also feels slightly out of place given how much working with the organization took up his later years; nor does the documentary put into the context of Moore’s own personal abhorrence of violence or Moore’s other activism against hunting and cruelty to animals, including rewriting his dialogue in The Saint episode The Inescapable Word to make clear his hatred of blood sports.

Ultimately From Roger Moore With Love makes a good effort at explaining the outline of Moore’s career to people who may simply know him from his Bond films (which, bizarrely after The Spy Who Loved Me, are barely covered) but fails to fully peel back the layers and reveal the “real” Roger Moore. It is an enjoyable but at times frustrating watch that feels close to helping the audience to fully understand who Moore was as a person but never entirely succeeding.