Is James Bond for ever?

You're a sexist, misogynistic dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms are wasted on me," Dame Judi Dench declares to Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye, her first outing as M - reports The Scotsman.

She's back in the latest Bond film, Quantum of Solace, lecturing Daniel Craig, a very different Bond, on not letting emotion get the mastery of his actions as he confronts the villains who caused the death of the woman he loved, Vesper Lynd, in Casino Royale.

Putting the latest Bond outing under the microscope of the South Bank Show, as happens tomorrow night, seems like handing a Jack Vettriano postcard to an art critic: the films are popular, but does Bond really merit the Melvyn Bragg treatment?

Barbara Broccoli, the daughter of celebrated Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, declares that the films have created a "new kind of cinematic genre" in every generation. Others might argue the shows imitate rather than create a fresh style – reviewers and audiences of Casino Royale will have noticed the influence of the successful Bourne trilogy on 007.

The South Bank Show sets out to ask whether there's a unique "Bond standard", an 007 ideal in which films and characters must become contemporary but remain true to some original vision of the series.

A few reviewers raved over the 22nd Bond outing, Quantum of Solace, after last week's premiere. Others complained that its boorish brutality has taken it too far from traditional Bond plots, and in particular that it lacks the ironic wit that saved so many other 007 films.

Not for Daniel Craig those overdone double-entendres, or glib one-liners, such as Sean Connery's quip in Thunderball after skewering a would-be assassin with a harpoon gun: "I think he got the point."

This sudden seriousness is certainly a departure from earlier films – Bond lost his wife, Teresa, at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but while he rapidly dispatched her killer in Diamonds Are Forever, the film that followed, he is hardly tormented by her memory.

Reviewers have suggested that Craig's Bond, with his tortured "gimlet-eyed intensity" as a damaged and dangerous 007, should just relax, and enjoy himself a little more – perhaps also creating a less gruelling experience for the audience.

Casino Royale, Craig's first Bond outing, introduced the idea of a James Bond who was fallible and vulnerable – he even has a near-death experience after being poisoned. Like Matt Damon's character in the Bourne films, the hero is almost impossibly bruised and battered by his battles.

This film, it seems, is even a little slack in the area of product placement. Bond movies have long been defined by the spy's lifestyle – tailored suits, hotels, casinos – as much as the famous theme.

Quantum of Solace features Smirnoff vodka, as has almost every Bond film since Dr No, but 007's Omega Seamaster watch simply tells the time these days, rather than offering a handy bomb detonation system. While Bond is behind the wheel of an Aston Martin again, the most prominent car product placement features actress Olga Kurylenko driving the new Ford Ka, modestly sized "green" vehicle.

Ian Fleming delivered a frank verdict on the appeal of the man with the licence to kill: "Spying has always been regarded as a very romantic one-man job. The books have plenty of action, his task is a straightforward one and he goes for it in a straightforward fashion."

It has been suggested that the Bond films marked the moment when 1960s Britain took off the handcuffs of history and reached for a new post-war, post-Empire identity. The James Bond of Fleming's novels gave hope to a generation feeling battered and bruised, brought to life in the early films by Sean Connery, a former body-builder who in Bond landed a breakthrough acting role.

Connery described Fleming as an upper-class snob through and through, who didn't like the choice of the Scottish actor and referred to him behind his back as an "overdeveloped stuntman". But he said of the character: "It came along at the end of the kitchen sink dramas. It was still a bad time in Britain, so many people identified with someone getting away with the dollies and the food. You were licensed to kill; there is a side of it that's very much a fantasy."

A new Bond film, says Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster, comes with a huge history attached – "you have Bond, you have the villain, you have the girls, all the framework of Ian Fleming's Bond".

But there is room to make changes – the villain of the piece this time, Dominic Greene, played by Mathieu Amalric, lacks the scars and the white cat of previous criminal masterminds – some commentators have suggested he's a send-up of the outgoing US vice-president, Dick Cheney.

Forster says he wanted to pay homage to the early Bond films from the 60s which he admired, such as Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, or Dr No, but at the same time push for something "new, different, and cutting edge", he said. Quantum of Solace also includes a wry tribute to Bond girl Jill Masterson's gold-plated fate in Goldfinger.

Forster says: "The interesting part of Quantum of Solace, it's where do we take Bond, what is the journey do we take him on? The Bond films are the crown jewels of English cinema. One has to play to the Britishness, that's the whole beauty about Bond. If you don't have that it loses the charm, and the charm is something that makes Bond, Bond."

Connery is still the model Bond for many people. "The essence of it for me was always to make everything easy, simple," the actor has said, "so if there was any movement it was important, there was a message that something was coming."

Craig has spoken of taking his cue from Connery, but that he has gone for a more physical interpretation of the role. "I wanted to be as physically involved as I could," he tells Melvyn Bragg on the South Bank Show. "Bond's movies have always been incredibly physical in my mind. Sean's movies were dynamic and balletic … I wanted to be involved with that, it's what people go to the movie to watch."

Sexist, misogynistic, superficial: Bond has been all of those things. He's seen out the Cold War and the War on Terror, and will probably outlast the South Bank Show too. In many ways he's a dubious icon, but it seems we're not going to escape him.

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