{"id":404302,"date":"2026-03-26T04:08:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T04:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/404302\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T04:08:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T04:08:25","slug":"bait-review-riz-ahmeds-marvelous-comedy-centered-around-james-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/404302\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bait’ review: Riz Ahmed’s marvelous comedy centered around James Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Riz Ahmed has created and stars in a marvelous new series, \u201cBait,\u201d<\/a> premiering Wednesday on Prime Video. There are no worms in it, though viral video plays a part, and fame \u2014 the pursuit of which is a subject \u2014 is a lure.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s in a name? A comedy by any other name would be as funny \u2014 if it was funny, and this one very much is, in a way that\u2019s crazy and serious and human, built around a character in crisis who refuses to believe his life is out of control and is so invested in putting up a front that he\u2019s begun to believe his own lies. Almost. It\u2019s a series in which hallucinations, dreams, magical realism and memories, which punctuate and interfere with the \u201cnormal\u201d business of the story, all amount to the same thing, and in which the style of the filming shifts with the action.<\/p>\n

Ahmad plays Shah Latif, a British Pakistani actor, who, owing to the exertions of his faithful, often frustrated agent, Felicia (Weruche Opia), is improbably auditioning to be the next James Bond. But he repeatedly forgets his line when his scene partner, a girl with a gun, asks, \u201cTell me, when it\u2019s just you all alone, how do you live with yourself? Do you even know who you are?\u201d establishing a theme. (The line he can\u2019t recall: \u201cI don\u2019t live with myself, I live with whoever you need me to be.\u201d Spies and actors!)<\/p>\n

Leaving the audition, he contrives to be photographed by one of the paparazzi lurking outside, sniffing for a Bond scoop; his picture is published, which creates a stir and some racist blowback, culminating in a package thrown through the front window of his parents\u2019 home. (It is not a window that opens.) What\u2019s inside the package I\u2019ll leave for you to discover, but it will play a part through the rest of the show.<\/p>\n

The recurring question of who will be the next James Bond generates a lot of pop cultural heat in our world; just type \u201cnext James Bond\u201d into your search engine of choice. At one point, you may recall, Idris Elba<\/a> was regularly bruited as a potential 007, which occasioned enough anti-Black reaction that he officially took himself out of the unofficial running. It may have been on Ahmed\u2019s mind here \u2014 Shah claims high purpose for his Bondean aspirations, that he wants \u201cto show them that this too is what British looks like.\u201d <\/p>\n

On the one hand, Shah has had enough of a career to have been made into a \u201climited edition collectible action figure,\u201d starred in a well-regarded but underseen small film, played \u201cthe translator in \u2018Homeland\u2019<\/a> series seven\u201d and earned a rising star award from some French festival; on the other, he is, professionally speaking, no Idris Elba \u2014 not a nobody, but not too many rungs above it. (He\u2019s not Dev Patel, either, with whom he\u2019s repeatedly confused.)<\/p>\n

At the top of the second episode, Shah is seemingly being interviewed on a podcast, \u201cSir Chatwick Stewart, with me, Sir Patrick Stewart<\/a>\u201d \u2014 played by the man himself, whom we hear but never see \u2014 about his ambitions, though it\u2019s soon clear that Stewart is a mental projection, an inner critic and inquisitor. He\u2019ll stick around through the series, offering barbed commentary and something like support: \u201cIf I humiliate you, it\u2019s to save you from the bigger humiliation of remaining as you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a protagonist continually getting in his own way, Shah is a classic sort of comic character. He creates opportunities only to squander them; finds himself voiceless after forcing himself onstage at a black-tie gala or in an underground club (he was once a politically provocative MC). After a newsworthy mishap, his agent advises him to lie low, which is impossible for him to do; there is no itch he won\u2019t scratch, and no good advice he\u2019ll actually follow. Apart from a rival actor (Himesh Patel) he\u2019s a protagonist without antagonists, excepting himself. He\u2019s insufficiently grateful to the people he owes, and insufficiently apologetic to those he\u2019s wronged.<\/p>\n

Shah\u2019s self-involvement will be challenged by ex-girlfriend Yasmin (Ritu Arya), encountered first by accident, then sought out \u2014 a writer, she has published an op-ed headlined, \u201cNo, Shah Latif, We Don\u2019t Need a Brown Bond\u201d \u2014 in which she accuses him of \u201cexchanging his political art for vanilla distraction.\u201d His family, whom he neglects to visit for months, includes warm-hearted cousin Zulfi (Guz Khan), who has started a Muslim ride share company; a no-nonsense sister (Aasiya Shah) \u2014 the name of her character is rendered as \u201cQ\u201d on IMDb and elsewhere, but in the series itself she\u2019s called Ainy \u2014 doting mother Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha); and his skeptical father, Parvez (Sajid Hasan), who has not been keeping his doctor appointments and asks Shah, \u201cWhat do you even do? I watch TV all day \u2014 you\u2019re never on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Appropriate to a character who lives for being onscreen, \u201cBait\u201d plays with the language of film \u2014 gritty procedural, a burst of Bollywood, romantic comedy \u2014 though not necessarily to the usual ends. Frame-filling titles identify the London neighborhoods where the action takes place \u2014 Wembley, Kentish Town, Brick Lane, Ladbroke Grove \u2014 as Paris, Moscow and Mexico City might appear in an international thriller. The series is at once satirical and celebratory; \u201cBait\u201d feels abundant, both in its presentation of a culture, which has the ring of documentary truth, and as a beautifully realized work of art.<\/p>\n

Bond can wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riz Ahmed has created and stars in a marvelous new series, \u201cBait,\u201d premiering Wednesday on Prime Video. There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[4957,6054,146528,8774,18,117,19,17,7391,182983,327,40009,524,182985,73048,1142,26283,24868,9782,182984],"class_list":["post-404302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-action","tag-actor","tag-bait","tag-character","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-bond","tag-marvelous-comedy","tag-movies","tag-name","tag-part","tag-political-art","tag-protagonist","tag-review","tag-riz-ahmed","tag-series","tag-shah","tag-shah-latif"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}