“DR No” planted a field ripe for spoofing when it began the plethora of high-cost, high-adrenalin, all-the-same moves featuring 007 played by a succession of actors.

In this one, secret agent English (Rowan Atkinson), dismissed after a fiasco in Mozambique, returning after five years’ training in Chinese martial self-discipline because head of MI7 Pamela (Gillian Anderson) needs his skills to foil a plot to assassinate the Chinese PM during a State visit, spoofs 007 as agreeably as any.

And we’ve learned all this even before the opening credits!

Don’t rush out as soon as the closing credits start to roll. For as long as it takes to perform Grieg’s “In The Hall Of The Mountain King”, Atkinson does a virtuoso wordless comic turn in the kitchen preparing a stir-fry at the request of delectable colleague Kate (Rosamund Pike).

Between opening and closing credits, director Oliver Parker has inserted an action drama lampooning the best and worst of the Bond film clichés. Writers William Davies and Hamish McColl have provided Atkinson with a cornucopia of comic opportunities.  Some them actually made me laugh.

At all cinemas