The end of James Bond as we know him is almost assured. The licence to kill, albeit in film terms, hasn’t exactly been revoked, but it’s clearly been left lying in the kitchen scrap drawer, alongside last year’s TV licence and the doctor’s letter saying you’re on the waiting list for 2026.

Isn’t it time? And who drinks dry Martinis anyway?

British actor Florence Pugh is poised to play Moneypenny in a TV spin-off from Amazon’s takeover of the Bond franchise. And it’s not hard to see the logic in moving away from the man in the perfect tuxedo to the woman with the neat twin set and pearls.

Recent television successes with spy dramas such as Slow Horses, Black Doves and Killing Eve have underlined that viewers are no longer interested in 20-minute fight scenes, watching islands, underground lairs and oil tankers blown up. And final scenes in which rockets are nano seconds from destroying the world just don’t take off anymore.

Naomie Harris starred as Moneypenny in the recent Bond movies (Image: Press Association Images) Who wants to see a movie featuring a functioning alcoholic with a clothes and gadget obsession and no inner life? Yes, there was a time when we demanded that Bond save the world from SMERSH and SPECTRE and Bobby Carlyle when he had the dodgy eye. But not now. Our spy series these days are as likely to reveal the enemy to be within, the career agents who play with politics for their own end. The antagonist may well be the........

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