A frenetic, fever dream of a show, Bait follows a South Asian man who becomes a serious contender for the role of James Bond. Pulling triple duty as writer, producer, and performer, Riz Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling actor who must balance the expectations of his family, friends, and the South Asian community at large, while clinging to his 15 minutes of fame. Rounding out the cast is Guz Khan as Zulfi and Aasiya Shah as Q, Shah’s cousins, Sheeba Chaddha as his mother, Tahira, and Sajid Hasan as his father, Parvez.
The show expounds in exciting ways upon its elevator pitch: “Riz Ahmed as James Bond.” Ahmed has long been an active and outstanding proponent of thoughtful Muslim and South Asian portrayals in TV and movies, gracefully and consistently doing the work for more than two decades now. (Let’s not forget that a whole Bechdel-style test was named after him.) So it’s no wonder that he would create a story so unique to his experience and position in British media.
Of course, 007 represents more than a cushy role in Bait and in the real world: it holds dual symbolism as the pinnacle of British cinema (the job 100 actors would kill for, to paraphrase The Devil Wears Prada), while remaining a contentious icon of British imperialism at its most polished, revered, and white. To bring together the modern, diverse, inclusive face of Britain (Ahmed) with the old, traditional, exclusive face of Britain (Bond) strikes an intriguing notion indeed.
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The result is a colourful, sometimes bizarre, and fairly entertaining six-episode dramedy that allows Ahmed and the rest of the predominantly South Asian cast to be unflinching, unfiltered, and unapologetic about showing the struggle and toll of achieving proper representation in Western media. Additionally, it boldly shows how the South Asian community isn’t as tight-knit, unified, or one-dimensional as the non-South Asian public would like to imagine. It also features an excellent soundtrack, including a Jorja Smith song that fatefully serves as Ahmed’s Bond theme.
Unlike the compelling, talented, and well-admired Ahmed, Shah suffers as a grasping, opportunistic, and mediocre actor who very willingly steps on anyone and everyone to achieve stardom. The backstabbing doesn’t only come from Shah: another Bond contender named Raj Thakkar, played by the dashing Himesh Patel, proves more than happy to throw his competition under the bus at a gala full of posh white people.
This toxic competitive streak seeps into more than just Shah’s career; it’s part of his family, too. He and Tahira are all too ready to indulge in gossip and bad-mouthing their relatives as a form of mother-son bonding, to the point that they cannot recognize genuine kindness and become suspicious instead.
Bait contains strong characters from Shah’s mixed household, including his fussy but foul-mouthed mother, lightly lecherous father, and hustling cousins. When the rest of his extended family gathers to celebrate Eid in an enormous and chaotic house party, the show skewers the interpersonal drama between all of them, dipping into Bollywood-esque high drama.
The series also shows a diverse mix of South Asian characters, including serious political activists versus attention-seeking social media influencers, revealing the hierarchy within the diaspora (Nabhaan Rizwan’s Salim is a rich and successful cousin who lives in Dubai? Yeah, I’d be jealous of him, too). It’s complicated and messy, and a necessary view of the South Asian community, which is not a monolith but is a vast diaspora.
Again and again, the choice between displaying loyalty to his family and friends or pandering to white audiences confronts Shah — and again and again, he cringes away from doing what is right to doing what is easy instead. It’s hard to judge him too harshly when the weight of expectations that rest on his shoulders is a pileup of conflicting ideas and opinions that seem both valid and invalid depending on the moment and the person. Others are quick to find criticism (one journalist points out that Shah has a lightened photo on his IMDb page), and sometimes it’s an authentic call-out, but sometimes it’s done to nab a little bit of attention for themselves. They all have their effect on Shah’s conscience, though, causing him to ricochet around and scramble to hold himself together.
Eventually, Shah alienates everyone around him, and madness descends, manifesting itself as a severed pig’s head with the voice of Sir Patrick Stewart, delightfully dubbed “Pigtrick Stewart.” A deeply haram image that’s equal parts comedic and repugnant, making it an especially striking symbol in Bait.
As a device, it bears some similarity to Irving Welch’s talking tapeworm in the novel Filth (which coincidentally, also has a pig’s head on the cover) that serves as the main character’s anti-conscience or the shoulder devil. It’s also nasty, hateful, and cumbersome, something that Shah tries to keep hidden, only to further alienate himself from others. Pigtrick Stewart’s ultimate end renders extremely gross but cathartic, and ultimately necessary for Shah to reconnect with his family.
Bait highlights the importance of having ties to the community (and the difficulty of doing so) in the pursuit of proper or authentic representation. Shah doesn’t have the best ties to his family and community for most of the show’s runtime, but at the same time, it’s hard for him to forge those bonds when such vastly different characters make up his community. Nothing about his journey appears clear-cut or easy. The series leaves its audience with gratitude that creatives like Ahmed bear the enormous weight of it all with a true grounding in their communities.
