Strange. You were willing to accept Sickboy in New York as Holmes, but Lucy Liu was a bridge too far? Me, I'd be cool with whoever they want Watson to be... so long as it isn't Lucy Liu. I'd rather watch Ru Paul.

You do realize that Team Broccoli ran out of Fleming novels with Living Daylights in '87, right? And that at one point James Bond was driving an invisible Aston Martin across a lake while a North Korean clone fired space lasers at him? Moonraker was written in 1955 - no space in it anywhere; the eponymous weapon was an upgraded Nazi V-2. Fleming himself barely outlived JFK; when he died, Vietnam was still a police action. Shit, when Fleming died the British could still pretend to be a geopolitical force.

The notting hill riots were '58. There were maybe 20,000 black people in all of England. The Commonwealth Act of '62 ensured it'd stay that way. Despite 3 more similar acts since, there are now more than a million self-identified blacks in the UK, or two percent of the population. Seems almost as improbable as shooting down a pod full of poisonous orchids during re-entry, if you ask me.

I'd say the UK has earned a black Bond.