The spy movies that rival 007

If No Time to Die and the inevitable 007 re-runs on ITV haven’t already sated your appetite for Bond-style espionage thrills, there’s a veritable smorgasbord of spy movies available to assuage your hunger.

Some of the actors who portrayed Bond also essayed secret agents of a different stripe, with Sean Connery (The Russia House), Pierce Brosnan (The Tailor of Panama), Daniel Craig (Munich, Archangel) and Timothy Dalton (Permission to Kill, The Rocketeer) all dabbling in non-007 cloak and dagger roles.

For such a long-lasting and successful franchise, it’s perhaps odd that the producers (Eon) haven’t yet contrived to release any 007 film spin-offs.

To my knowledge, the closest the series came was in 2002, when there was talk of a separate movie project for Halle Berry’s NSA agent Jinx from the awful Die Another Day.

This obviously came to naught, despite the flurry of press reports at the time.

A few years previously, after the release of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) MGM tentatively ran the idea of a Chinese secret service agent Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) solo picture up the flagpole, but interest at the time was muted.