Here are some of the sentences I never expected to write, back when I started this column six years ago.

The Russians have attempted to poison a spy in Salisbury. Boris Johnson is prime minister. Stop panic buying toilet roll and pasta. Liz Truss is prime minister.

This week sees the release of a new Indiana Jones film.

Yes, strange as it may seem, octogenarian Harrison Ford is dusting down his hat and whip for one of the most eagerly awaited action films of the year.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is, in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy style numerology, the fifth in the trilogy of everyone’s favourite action-archaeologist.

We’re now in the late 1960s, with Indy, his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and the inevitable former Nazi Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) all on the hunt for the Antikythera, some sort of ancient Greek plot device that allows its owner to travel in time.

Ford himself has done his own time travelling for the film, with a bit of digital detoxing of his face for some of the earlier sequences.

Cinemagoers, too, will be hoping for a bit of time travel themselves, praying the film bypasses 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and returns the series to its eighties heyday.

Back in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the biggest grossing film of the year: its sequel, the not-aged well Temple of Doom did likewise in 1984, as did The Last Crusade in 1989.

The films were the brainchild of George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg, about as blockbuster a pair of blockbuster film makers as it was possible to get.

These were films – and particularly their actions sequences – to be watched from the edge of your seat. Whether it was runaway boulders, rickety rope bridges, or descending doors, there was something satisfyingly old-fashioned about the film’s best moments.

Similarly, there was old-school Hollywood fireworks in the chemistry between the craggy charms of Ford and the free spirit of Karen Allen’s Marion.

The best films in the series saw the Nazis as the antagonists, always getting their just desserts for messing with what should have been left alone: the melting consequences of opening the Ark of the Covenant; the rapid ageing from mistakenly thinking the shiny goblet was the holy grail, rather than the drab one in the corner.

Cinema has had a rough ride in recent years, thanks to a double-whammy of lockdown and streaming alternatives. But there remains nothing better than a big film on the big screen.

Spielberg reportedly told Tom Cruise ‘You saved Hollywood’s Ass’ with last year’s Top Gun: Maverick. Now it’s Indiana Jones’ turn to ride to Hollywood’s rescue.