Credit: Jay Dixit

It’s mad how Robert Langdon can disappear off the TV for years and then meander back in as though he has only nipped out for a cuppa coffee. We are aiming towards Netflix having another crack at Dan Brown’s professor; only Morgan Spector will be playing Langdon in the series drawn from the 2025 novel ‘The Secret of Secrets’.

There is no official title yet, but it already sounds like we’ll be binge-watching this one. Langdon sets out on a mission to find a missing scientist and recover a manuscript that could change how people understand the human mind.

Obviously, this will not be some gentle academic mooch through old libraries. So, Langdon ends up going head-to-head with these ancient forces while trying to make sense of clues tied to this futuristic science and mystical beliefs. And the more he gets mired into it, the more it starts questioning what we actually know about the human mind.

Spector is taking on one of modern thriller fiction’s most recognisable roles, so there is a lot riding on this. Langdon first appeared in Brown’s 2000 novel ‘Angels & Demons’, then returned in ‘The Da Vinci Code’, ‘The Lost Symbol’, ‘Inferno’, ‘Origin’ and now ‘The Secret of Secrets’.

The character is famous for having a ridiculous memory and reading symbols. That gift makes him the ideal guide through Brown’s stories, where history is rarely innocent.

The series comes from Brown and Carlton Cuse, the co-creator of Lost, who is serving as writer and showrunner. Cuse reckons Spector is spot on for Langdon because he brings intelligence without draining the warmth from a performance.

Brown’s books have sold more than 250 million copies in 56 languages, while the Robert Langdon films have made around $2.24 billion worldwide, so Netflix is hardly taking a punt on a cult property.

Makes it worth waiting for, doesn’t it?