In Episode 2 of Bait, the protagonist Shah Latif (Riz Ahmed) seems to be recording a podcast with the legendary actor Patrick Stewart. Eventually, we realise he is talking to himself. Technically, he’s talking to a frozen pig’s head that responds to him in Stewart’s voice.
Riz Ahmed and Guz Khan, who play cousins in Bait, have outstanding chemistry, and some of the best lines in the show.
This porcine lovechild of Yorick and Jiminy Cricket is one of many aces up Ahmed’s kameez in Bait, the show he helms as creator, co-writer and star (now streaming on Amazon Prime).The pig’s head was thrown at Shah’s parents’ house after tabloids leaked the news that he had auditioned for the role of James Bond. It is evidence of a hate crime. Yet, from its first appearance, the pink, dead-eyed, smiley-faced head looks incongruously friendly.
Once it becomes a literal talking head, Pigtrick Stewart is the skull to Shah’s Hamlet, as the struggling actor grapples with whether James Bond is his to be or not to be. When Pigtrick talks back, he is the White other in a Brown actor’s head, shapeshifting between acting coach, friend, therapist, critic and abuser.
It’s an outrageous idea; much like the notion of a small, brown Muslim man playing Bond. As a storytelling device, it’s just the right mix of ridiculous and revealing, which sums up Bait in a nutshell. Ahmed’s show entertains while urging the viewer to interrogate what we normalise and notice how prejudice subtly seeps into our fantasies.
As the show unfolds, it follows Shah on an emotional rollercoaster ride through Eid celebrations, family drama and social-media mayhem, to a second audition for the role of Bond. Woven into the deadpan British humour are parodies of everything from bleak Nordic thrillers to Bollywood’s Technicolor excesses. A messy love angle emerges between Shah and ex-girlfriend Yasmin (Ritu Arya), in an episode that feels like a desi riff on Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995).
Like the Britain it’s set in, Bait is a melting pot. The jokes keep coming, but the show also makes space for the violence, pain and trauma of being a discriminated-against minority. It’s also a talent showcase for the South Asian diaspora.
Not many writing teams could acknowledge ISIS in a silly joke, defang the slur “Paki”, or weave the term “intifada fuc*boi” into casual conversation. But Ahmed, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, Azam Mahmood, Dipika Guha, Karen Joseph Adcock and Ben Karlin do this and more. Complementing the on-screen drama is a stirring soundtrack that includes an Urdu version of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Arooj Aftab and DJ Anish Kumar, Jorja Smith’s Price of it All, and a score by Shruti Kumar.
By the end of Bait, I was convinced the next Bond film ought to have an enemies-to-brothers storyline with stand-up comedian Guz Khan (stellar, as Shah’s enterprising cousin Zulfi) as the spy’s sidekick.A South Asian Bond would likely need a subplot involving his mother, and she better be played by Sheeba Chaddha, who is brilliant as always in the role of Shah’s mother Tahira, infusing main-character energy into the supporting role. I just wish the show had found a way to give us a scene in which Ahmed, Khan, Chaddha and Arya play off one another.
In an entertainment scene overflowing with remakes and replicas, this show sparkles with originality. There’s mischief in almost every moment, as it uses humour to critique the world around it, without succumbing to bitterness. Ahmed’s series is a necessary reminder of how much fun dissent can be. Let’s hope Amazon Prime takes the bait and gives him a second season.
(To reach out with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram.The views expressed are personal)
