If I have been Riz Ahmed, I might be very up myself too. In the twenty years since his display profession started, the actor has gained Oscars and Baftas; been forged in a Star Wars movie and a Charli xcx video; impressed a metric for Muslim on-screen illustration (the Riz Test) and crafted a physique of labor comprising performances that are each individually excellent and collectively significant.
He has performed so by combining expertise with an uncommon willingness to interact with the broader context of what it means to be a brown British particular person on Twenty first-century planet Earth. I think about a specific amount of ego is additionally essential to energy the entire enterprise. And in that case, what of it?
That’s one query explored by Bait, the brand new six-episode sequence created and co-written by Ahmed, who additionally stars. He performs Shah Latif, a rapper turned actor from a energetic west London Pakistani Muslim household, who finds himself in rivalry to switch Daniel Craig as the brand new 007 – a career-stage roughly analogous to Ahmed’s circa 2016. These pressures convey a few disaster in Shah’s life: he’s afraid of turning into “bait”, each within the London slang sense of “obvious”, “naff”, a “sell-out”, and additionally within the closer-to-OED sense of a lure, used – on this case – by the British state to co-opt reliable dissent.
So this is a present that’s half semi-autobiographical sitcom, within the vein of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Ramy (one in every of Ahmed’s co-writers, Azam Mahmood, is an alum), and half surrealist business satire. It’s pleasingly paying homage to Naqqash Khalid’s under-seen 2023 movie In Camera, or certainly Mogul Mowgli, Ahmed’s personal improbable 2020 collaboration with director Bassam Tariq, who additionally directs three of those episodes.
That doubly self-referential stance might need worn skinny, however Bait overcomes any viewer skepticism by rooting the foolish enjoyable of set-pieces such because the Bond battle send-up in an emotionally genuine household drama. Sheeba Chaddha as Shah’s mum, Tahira, deserves particular props; an actor of such palpable high quality that she elevates each scene she’s in. The nuances of their mother-son relationship and the way it feeds Tahira’s personal insecurities may have sustained a number of extra episodes.
It’s not a sitcom then, but it surely is steadily very humorous. Much of the humour comes from the dialogue: a blinding show of second-gen immigrant linguistic dexterity, which slips between Urdu, Arabic, MLE and RP (for the museum galas), by way of a stream of cruel insults – largely coming from cousin Zulfi (Guz Khan), and largely directed at Shah.
But it’s additionally a present of group energy – by which I imply the British south Asian actor group, wherein Ahmed is a revered chief. Besides Khan (of Man Like Mobeen fame), there are nice cameos/roles for Himesh Patel, Nabhaan Rizwan and Sagar Radia (AKA Rishi from Industry), plus a number of name-checks for Oscar-nominated Dev Patel. It’s a approach of acknowledging and transcending the skilled rivalries that may outcome when British movie nonetheless seemingly operates a one-in-one-out coverage, like a racist doorman at a Shoreditch evening membership.
The elegant and fierce Ritu Arya (from Polite Society) is additionally nice casting as love curiosity Yasmin. She joins Shah for a Brick Lane rickshaw chase scene, rooted within the millennial Londoner’s understanding that there is no extra romantic tune within the universe than UK storage anthem Flowers. Later, there’s additionally a much less culturally layered, however equally sensible, subversion of that romcom staple, the airport sprint scene.
Generally, Bait is greatest when Ahmed-the-performer is bouncing off a number of of the excellent forged, and when Ahmed-the-writer is exposing his most petty, narcissistic and self-absorbed instincts. It’s when he’s soliloquising with a pig’s head – rather than Hamlet’s extra conventional cranium – that the endurance is strained.
Nobody wants reminding that this man can act, and may play Bond backwards along with his eyes closed if he needed to. The level, absolutely, is that he’s obtained higher issues to do. So to comply with up all that brave, self-lacerating writing with a scene wherein Shah triumphantly wows a director (“I’ve never seen anybody turn a performance round like that!”) feels not solely pointlessly self-congratulatory but additionally, effectively … a bit bait.
Then once more, if Bait is the story of an Ahmed-like actor getting over himself – wherein Riz Ahmed fails, conspicuously, to recover from himself – that additionally is smart. And it units us up properly for a second sequence. Only this time, hopefully, with 20% extra Guz Khan.
