"Good points SoD. I would also suggest similar regarding Skyfall in 2012. Yes, it was good film, but its success may have factors attributed to it (to name a few highlights of 2012)"
Very interesting points, the Red Kind and others, re the cultural context of Bond. It can work both ways, as well. Whereas SF was partly so successful because of a general feeling that Britain was on the up, and so a healthy dose of jingoism was felt to be in order in 2012, a comparable phenomenon happened with the background of TSPWLM- which involved a sense of moody decline.
Like Skyfall, Spy arrived in time for a big Royal event, in this case the 1977 Silver Jubilee, and the title sequence refers fairly obviously to this sort of patriotic imagery.
But in 1977:
Britain had just had to go to the IMF in 1976 for a bailout, an unheard-of humiliation at the time.
The politics of détente under the unpopular Jimmy Carter meant that the US and UK were grappling with a general sensation of the West having lost their way, fallen behind, morally as well as in our case fiscally bankrupt...
With all this in mind, Spy provided an escape from the drudgery and a return to, variously, unbridled patriotism, exotic glamour and a UK acting as a muscular world power in concert with the US and USSR to take down Stromberg. Bond can flourish in tough as well as positive times...