After a then-record 12 years and seven consecutive films as James Bond, Roger Moore retired from the role at 57 after 1985’s A View to a Kill.
EON Productions were ready to reboot, taking auditions from the likes of Sam Neill (who hated the experience) and future 007 Pierce Brosnan.
The latter was offered the role but was unable to get out of his Remington Steele TV contract at the time, leaving him heartbroken, and in the end, they went with Timothy Dalton.
Daniel Craig’s gritty Casino Royale is often cited as a return to the Bond of Ian Fleming’s source material, but in reality it was the Welsh star who did it first in 1987’s The Living Daylights.
Breathing new life into the 007 franchise with a cigarette-puffing ruthlessness, Dalton’s Bond debut is by far the most underrated movie of the franchise and one many casual fans may not have ever seen.
Partly based on Fleming’s 007 short story of the same, The Living Daylights dropped the campier tone of the Moore era and embraced a harder-edged seriousness that was much closer to the feel of the novels.
Featuring some fantastic action sequences, the more complex Cold War thriller plot was also a step away from the more fantastical elements of the film franchise that would resurface in the latter half of the Brosnan era.
Oh, and that excellent A-ha Bond theme had a serious behind-the-scenes feud during its composition.
The Living Daylights is on ITV1 this afternoon and presumably streaming on ITVX afterwards.
