For a cheering example of progress, you need look no further than at the roles currently bookending Jane Seymour’s career. In the 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die, she played a character so useless that she makes most of the other Bond girls look like accomplished world leaders. And now here she is, at the age of 71, reinventing herself as “an action hero”, she says with a laugh. “Chasing bad guys with a stun gun and a sense of humour.”
Seymour plays Harry Wild, the title character of a crime drama – “it’s soft crime”, she says, by way of explaining its cosy tone – that was written for her. It’s not exactly Line of Duty, but it is charming and Seymour is great as an English literature professor who retires and becomes an accidental sleuth. If, as I am, you are tired of cliched detectives with disastrous personal lives and a drink problem, Harry – it’s short for Harriet – is the antidote: fun, spirited and accompanied by a teenage sidekick.
