It’s a couple of months now since Spectre burst on to our cinema screens. Like a firework it blazed bright but its light has since been dimmed in comparison to the latest Star Wars epic. (Actually, I think that Spectre and The Force Awakens have quite a lot in common but that will have to wait for another time.)

Much of the hype surrounding Spectre arose because its predecessor in the series, Skyfall, was largely considered to have been a huge success. And I think that this hype has led to a specific flaw in Spectre. Since the 1970s, the Bond series has renewed itself by riffing off whatever it can find elsewhere in popular culture. So Live and Let Die is the Blaxploitation one, Moonraker the Star Wars one, Octopussy the (admittedly this one’s more of a long shot) Indiana Jones one, The World is Not Enough