Source : the age
Bait ★★★★
When we first meet Shah Latif (Riz Ahmed), he’s performing. The British actor is giving suave menace as he auditions for the golden chalice of franchise roles: James Bond. The tuxedo fits but when Shah messes up, his 007 moment is gone. That just means Shah, who is growing desperate, can deliver another performance: successful actor. As he’s leaving the audition, a paparazzo snaps away and by the time he gets home his image is online and mistaken speculation of a “Brown Bond” is trending. Mission accomplished.
That canniness and cringe, self-promotion and self-denial, is fundamental to Bait: a whiplash mix of satire and psychodrama created by Ahmed. Laced together in six concise half-hours, the show is about someone who’s been performing for so long that he’s lost track of his true self. Shah says all the right things, even when they’re contradictory. He’s reassuring his best friend and cousin, Zulfi (Guz Khan), that he hasn’t sold out, while pitching himself as an “ambassador” to a prestigious museum’s director mid-gala.
Bait is busy. You get a terrific sense of different London suburbs, particularly the Latif clan’s home of Wembley, and there’s a terrific chatter throughout that feels lived-in. “I haven’t had any Google alerts for a while,” notes Shah’s loving mother, Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha). But once the headlines start, the attention goes crazy – there’s a hate crime at the family home and Shah’s ex, Yasmin (Ritu Arya), is quick off the mark with a condemnatory piece in the newspaper.
When he should be preparing for his second Bond audition, Shah starts unravelling. An inanimate object, voiced by Patrick Stewart, is urging him to grab success by any means possible, but it’s a one step forward, two steps back process.
Ahmed, whose standout movie performances span Nightcrawler, Rogue One and Sound of Metal, not to mention a note-perfect Girls guest slot, skilfully articulates the many strands at play, whether it’s Shah’s fraught personal relationships or the way he’s edging ever closer to hypocrisy.
As cultural commentary, Bait has an obvious specificity. Shah, like Ahmed, is the son of Pakistani immigrants, and racism lurks as both a violent memory and an institutional risk. But the story it’s telling can apply to anyone who’s part of a minority, anyone who feels they have to play different versions of themselves depending on the setting.
The willingness to experiment is exhilarating – great actors, such as Rafe Spall, have canny guest roles, while the tone can shift from paranoid thriller to Bollywood exuberance. This show definitely has a licence to thrill.
Bait is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.
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Craig Mathieson is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.
