Riz Ahmed imagines the dark side of being a 007 candidate (a position he knows something about) in his Prime Video comedy series.
Your name has come up as a possible James Bond, but you have always been down the list, behind Idris Elba then and Callum Turner now. What could you do to improve your chances? How about writing and starring in a satirical mini-series about an actor who flubs his audition to be the next James Bond but finds himself touted as a favorite anyway? It's what they call manifesting, right?
That would be the cynical view to take of “Bait,” written by and starring the gifted British actor Riz Ahmed, which premieres Wednesday on Amazon Prime Video. In reality, though, it’s more a case of Ahmed’s respectfully taking himself out of contention. The Bond producers would not want audiences to have Ahmed’s character -- a paranoid, hallucinating basketcase who carries on a dialogue with a severed pig’s head -- in the back of their minds while watching the next 007. No matter how good Ahmed looks in a dinner jacket.
Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a London-based performer of unspecified but no better than B-list renown, who is allowed to audition for Bond as a favor to a friendly director. In the opening scene, he repeatedly blanks out on his big line, to the director’s great exasperation. It feels like the setup for a story about an overthinking actor who sabotages himself, ground that was recently covered by “Wonder Man.”
“Bait” is not primarily about acting as profession or practice; however; it’s about acting as metaphor. Shah, the son of immigrants from Pakistan, is having an identity crisis, unsure of what role he can or should or might be allowed to play in Western society (and in the country of his ancestors’ former colonizer, to boot). Bond would be a career triumph, but at what cost to his soul?
That thematic weight gradually pushes “Bait,” across its six half-hour episodes, in darker and heavier directions. It starts out as a reasonably sharp comedy: After Shah opportunistically sparks a flurry of memes falsely portraying him as a Bond front-runner, the effect on his family and community (Shah’s parents live in Wembley, where Ahmed was born) is immediate and amusingly down to earth.
For his mother, Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha), who named him Shahjehan after the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan), the news is long-awaited validation. For his cousin and best bro, Zulfikar (Guz Khan), who is trying to get his Muslim car service off the ground, it’s a marketing opportunity. For many, including Shah’s ex, Yasmin (Ritu Arya), a maker of virtuous documentaries -- her latest is about ship breaking -- it represents a predictable sellout.