Fleming (Season 1)

Fleming (2014) is a four-part biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM — the story of Ian Fleming in the years before he invented James Bond. Set in London at the outbreak of World War II, the series finds its subject as a reckless, debt-prone playboy living permanently in his older brother Peter's shadow, burning through the family fortune on rare books and fast cars.

Dominic Cooper plays Fleming as a man who genuinely wants to matter and is given his chance when the Director of Naval Intelligence recruits him to run operations against the Nazis. Lara Pulver — best known as Irene Adler in Sherlock — plays Baroness Ann O'Neill. Samuel West, Leslie Manville and Harry Treadaway fill out the cast. Mat Whitecross directed; the script, by Don MacPherson and John Brownlow, draws on letters from Fleming's wife and John Pearson's authorized biography.

The series is most interesting as a study in self-invention — a man who built his fantasy life on paper once he could no longer live it. Whether the real Fleming was half as cool as 007 is the joke the show keeps telling on itself. Stream Fleming online on iFILM.