What's worse than being a Muslim living in the UK? A Pakistani-origin Muslim living in the UK. And what's worse than being a Pakistani-origin Muslim living in the UK? Being a Pakistani-origin Muslim actor living in the UK. And what's worse than being a Pakistani-origin Muslim actor living in the UK? Being a Pakistani-origin Muslim actor auditioning for the part of — wait for it — James Bond aka 007 aka... the greatest, most iconic fictional spy of all time?
The new Prime Video series "Bait", created by and starring Riz Ahmed, and co-directed by Bassam Tariq and Tom George, takes this idea and runs with it to excellent results. It has to its advantage a short and crisp runtime — each episode runs less than 30 mins — and spans six episodes, in which it manages to cover a lot of ground that probably would've, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, taken longer. A concept like this at a time when we are awaiting the announcement of the next James Bond — after Daniel Craig's exit — is quite a stroke of genius.
The most impressive quality of the writing in "Bait" — courtesy of Riz Ahmed, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, Azam Mahmood, Dipika Guha, Karen Joseph Adcock, and Ben Karlin — is that the jokes land most of the time, unlike some recent attempts at mining humour out of awkward cross-cultural scenarios.
Islamophobia in the UK has always been — and continues to be — a serious concern, and it helps that the lead actor and one his directors both happen to be British Pakistani talents whose work is infused with a real sense of the danger and paranoia that naturally accompany their identities.
The "Bait" team, while not coming up with some inventive comic lines that poke fun at racists and their constantly abhorrent association of any Muslim with a terrorist, is aware that for a subject of this nature, one has to, at some point, take it into dramatic territory. There's an entire situation involving a forced apology due to a misunderstanding that illustrates the current reality where "offended" influencers seek social media engagement by targeting celebrities.
Ahmed, who has been good at playing psychologically tormented characters without making it seem forced, aces the part of Shah Latif, who begins to find his sanity tested when he becomes a target of gossip rags and draws unwelcome attention and unwarranted scrutiny — not to mention a complicated situation involving his ex-girlfriend and columnist, Yasmin (the exceptionally talented and gorgeous Ritu Arya who was fantastic in "Polite Society" and "Umbrella Academy" as well).
Guz Khan as Shah's cousin and entrepreneur Zulfi gets the lion's share of the comic bits. His perfect mix of cockiness, charm, and level-headedness is a perfect foil for Ahmed's angst-ridden character.
But one would be remiss if they left out every cast member — most notably, Sheeba Chaddha as Shah's foul-mouthed, insecure mother; Sajid Hasan as his unapologetically direct father Parvez; Aasiya Shah as his devil-may-care sister amusingly named 'Q' — because they all play their part with such conviction that you would think they forgot that the camera was constantly following them and breathing down their necks.
Oh, and let’s not forget Patrick Stewart, who gets into someone’s head in a way that’s completely different from what he attempted in his stint as Charles Xavier!
Series: Bait
Creator: Riz Ahmed
Director: Bassam Tariq, Tom George
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Guz Khan, Aasiya Shah, Sheeba Chaddha, Sajid Hasan, Ritu Arya, Weruche Opia
Rating: 5/5