Ivan Radford | On 23, Aug 2025

When is a competition not a competition? When the rules simply don’t work. That was the problem facing 007: Road to a Million, Amazon’s James Bond-inspired game show that premiered back in 2023. Sending a string of couples on missions around the world, it claimed to ask the question: what happens when ordinary people are put into extraordinary situations? Fatally, the series never managed to establish a sense of stakes, give us a reason to be emotionally invested or find a way to reward players with prizes for their efforts. With no logic, structure, tension or fun, it was an awkward misfire that didn’t even capitalise on its one key weapon: Brian Cox playing the role of The Controller, the Blofeld-like figure giving the players their instructions.

Two years on, it’s back for a second season – and, in an unspoken verdict on its own success, Amazon Prime Video has almost entirely reworked the format. Where Season 1 randomly introduced people without us getting to know them, struggled to get a sense of competition between the players and didn’t even give them face-time with Cox’s Controller, Season 2 makes it clear from the off that this is a different matter.

We begin with all the competitors in the same room together, giving a briefing by The Controller. They’re challenged not only to prepare themselves, but to size each other up. All given the same or parallel tasks to complete, the slowest pairs from each round go head-to-head in a face-off involving the Killer Question that was introduced in Season 1 – hear put to much better use. The rounds build up to a finale in London where they meet The Controller in person to hopefully take home £1 million.

Cox, thankfully, is given much more to do. As well as interacting with the contestants during each elimination quiz, he watches and comments in a way that feels much more integrated. It helps that he has a room full of unnamed helpers all doing busy work on computers in an anonymous control room – all unnamed, that is, except for Frances McNamee, who plays Sofia, his cool and clinical number two. She briefs everyone, including him, on the tasks and players at hand – together, they provide exposition and logic, as well as a light touch of entertainment, all things that give a welcome sense of coherence and structure.

Of course, none of this works without a compelling cast, and Season 2 has improved there too, with a range of competitors whose stories are laid out from the beginning. There’s Dan and Dylan, a father who wants the best for his son, even though he struggles to be patient with him. There’s Rick and Noddy and Sam and Luke, two pairs of lifelong friends. There’s Shabina and Sid, married for 30 years, whose contrasting mix of caution and impulse is balanced out by a shared sense of humour. There’s siblings Asaad and Jamilah, whose confidence and trust in each other makes them the most likeable pair. There’s Rob and Alex, husbands whose patience with each other – particularly Rob with Alex’s perfectionist streak – is put under pressure. There’s the warm and loving husband-and-wife Steven and Shelley, who don’t listen to the end of each other’s sentences. And there’s sisters Cat and Maiya, who are ambitious and well-off and acknowledge that they come into this with all the preconceptions and perceptions that are attached with that wealthy background.

What’s fun is seeing their relationships put under pressure and what the result is. Some don’t progress through a recognisable arc – and typically end up leaving the show early – but others visibly come out of each mission learning to communicate better with each other, or appreciate each other’s individual skills. It’s frequently interesting to see that often the friends are more in sync than some of the families and couples they’re up against.

The challenges themselves, however, are the hook to keep you watching. Beginning with the dam jump from GoldenEye, we move to boats in Bangkok, climbing up city centre antennas and swimming in shark-infested waters to clambering out of Alpine cable cars. Along the way, there’s a deft mix of exotic locations and over-the-top spectacle that distinguishes the show from celebrities being stuck in the jungle or even the single-location setting of The Traitors – and helps elevate some of the set pieces from feeling too much like a 007-themed escape room. Expensive production values, and ideas such as getting intel on their opponents, all help to add stakes to the stunts, with the safety team kept firmly off-screen to make things feel as dangerous as possible. Throw in James Bond riffs on the soundtrack and a shorter runtime of 30 minutes per episode and you have a genuinely entertaining reality series that is almost unrecognisable from the dirge of its first outing. Can it compete with The Traitors and Squid Game: The Challenge? That’s a question, perhaps, for Season 3 – but for now, the mission to revamp and revive Amazon’s first 007-branded TV show is a success.

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