Idris Elba

PRESUMABLY so global audiences can understand that it really is set in London Town, the new movie-length Luther film has largely swapped gritty council estates in Tower Hamlets for the lights of Soho and Piccadilly Circus.

The riveting BBC series starring Idris Elba in the title role has moved into cinemas and onto Netflix by turning everything up to 11.

This means Luther: The Fallen Sun suddenly feels like – dare we say it – a Bond movie. One in particular in fact: Skyfall.

Both have manic chases through the Tube, both have a face-off under ice-capped waters and both have a villain with a questionable mop of strawberry blonde hair.

Harrington wonders if it was the hairpiece that really attracted Andy Serkis to the creepy, crazed killer part. Of course, Elba has often been suggested as a possible future James Bond – now Daniel Craig has hung up his gun.

Personally, I think we can all pin­point the very moment that Elba cashed his chips in on that race. His carefree Booking.com adverts are not an obvious audition for 007.

The Luther film is more so, but there is a knowing line in the movie where the weary detective heads into a posh bar and asks for inspiration as to what to order. The bartender suggests a Martini – Bond’s favourite tipple – but Luther chooses water instead.

The show and film’s writer Neil Cross has suggested this is an “extended middle finger and a wink” at the speculation – and kept in the script because Luther is better than Bond.

Fair enough, but Harrington and most of the film reviewer circuit, it seems, preferred Luther when he wasn’t trying to be a world-saving spy and confronting megavillains in their improbable lairs.

The stories in the TV series were always a tad violent and ludicrous in their own way, but they were also engaging character studies.

In each, Elba showed he could excel as a tortured detective in a woollen coat. And that’s how we want him. Not in a tux.