Gentleman
I've never liked James Bond.
He is an agent without much agency. He doesn't have to do much, because he is the main character, and the universe warps itself around him. Someone gives him three random spy gadgets, and in the next hour and a half he extracts himself from three sticky situations using those exact three gadgets. If he had been handed an exploding pen when what he really needed was an invisible car, he would be toast.
He only has to drive up to a casino and a woman half his age in a slinky evening dress will be eyeing him thoughtfully. There will be some attempt at an explanation later when this woman will inevitably turn out a standard femme fatale from central casting, but the image being projected is that of the alpha male playboy who the male audience is expected to envy. Bond not only gets the girl; he wants everyone else to know he got her too, and he wants us to know that we will never be like him, because he is the main character and we are not.
John Steed on the other hand could also get any girl in his world, but he actually has to talk to them first, and when he does, he will be charming and impeccably polite. He will not take advantage of anyone, and apart from maybe a roguish twinkle in his eye, he will not tell tales out of school. His closest colleague is a stunning younger woman who is in every respect his equal, and they care for each other and bicker like an old married couple.
A relationship like this could never happen in the Bond universe. In fact, when he had a brief lapse into good sense and tried to marry a character played by Diana Rigg, the franchise couldn't handle it and she had to be summarily killed off.
Mrs Peel certainly had an effect on me as a growing lad, but it is Patrick Macnee as Steed who perhaps made the more lasting impression. Steed is aspirational where Bond is merely impotent fantasy. There is nothing in this life that I can do to bend the universe to my will, but I can try to treat others with dignity and kindness, to stay calm in emergencies, and to work on my wardrobe.
My friend calls me a gentleman. I don't believe I deserve the title, but I tell her that if there is anything in me that could be called admirable, it is the result of trying to live up to her image of me.
May you all have such a friend.