For Queen and country: who will be the next Bond?

The BBC's cracking new organised crime drama McMafia has created a dilemma for the Beeb - what if its star, James Norton, gets poached to be the next James Bond? It's an interesting question: Daniel Craig has agreed to one more outing as 007, but by the time the film currently known only as 'Bond 25' appears on its target date of November 8, 2019, he will be 51 - two years older than Pierce Brosnan when his last, Die Another Day, was released (although Sir Roger Moore was 58 when he finally hung up the Walther PPK with A View To A Kill).

Age should not necessarily be a barrier, of course, but with the series becoming grittier and more physical for the lead actor since its reboot with Craig and Casino Royale in 2006, his seemingly petulant 2015 statement that he’d “rather slit his wrists” than do another Bond may have had some foundation. Craig's tone has, though, since changed (a lucrative contract will do that, of course) and it is believed that he will again be joined by Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q and Ralph Fiennes as M, with Yann Demange, directing. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade - who’ve written the last six Bond films - are also said to be working on the script.

As with the previous productions, the film's name and cast will probably only be revealed at a press event roughly a year before the movie opens, so late this year. Between now and the actual release date we will have to speculate on the plot, although apparent leaks have suggested that it will see Bond quit MI6 and get married. Not exactly the basis of a ripping action flick, though if it follows the plot of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in which the newly-betrothed 007 quickly becomes a widower, then there are grounds for revenge and the usual mayhem can ensue.

Assuming, though, that '25' will be Craig's last Bond film, the race has already begun to replace him. After much (credible) speculation about Idris Elba (too old), Tom Hardy (too brawny and probably already too old) and Tom Hiddlestone (too fey), James Norton has emerged as a standout candidate. His current portrayal of Alex Godman, the English-raised son of Russian mobsters in McMafia, has possibly provided the same Bond audition as Layer Cake did for Daniel Craig (I rewatched it recently - he basically was Bond...). Ironically, McMafia's New Year's Day BBC1 premiere drew an audience of six million - a million more than the ITV premiere of Craig's last Bond film, Spectre. At least the BBC know they’ve got a couple of years to cram in more of its dramatisation of journalist Misha Glenny's non-fiction book before its star gets poached by the Broccoli family.

Picture: Nick Wall/BBC/Cuba

That said, as easy as it is to see the Cambridge-educated Norton as Bond on the back of his brooding role (not to mention well-cut tailoring) in McMafia, it is an altogether more gentle performance that marked him out for me as a possible 007: Diane Keaton's cocky but charming son in the soppy-but-amusing Hampstead. Throw in his more recent psychopathic turn in Line Of Duty, and you've got the perfect candidate to give James Bond a new lease of life in the next chapter of the longest running - and best - series in cinema history.