Riz Ahmed’s Meta James Bond Casting Comedy ‘Bait’ Is Too High-Concept for Its Own Good: TV Review

By Alison Herman

Alison Herman

TV Critic

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The Amazon Prime Video comedy “Bait” has two contradictory concepts that uncomfortably co-exist inside the same six-episode season. On the one hand, the show is a deeply personal story from star and creator Riz Ahmed about what it’s like to be a South Asian, British and Muslim actor with deep roots in London, a biography Ahmed shares with “Bait” protagonist Shah Latif. On the other, it’s a canny act of IP exploitation, with the mega-corporate and the individual making for a discordant set of priorities.

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