The Cutprice Guignol

The name’s crisis – identity crisis. Let’s talk about Bait!

Bait, which came out earlier this year, follows actor Shah (Riz Ahemd, who also created and co-wrote the show) after he flubs an audition to become the new James Bond – only to get a second chance at the role, amidst a chaotic period of his personal life. And it’s a show that really surprised me. Because I expected some kind of relatively straightforward dramedy; I was ready to watch my beloved Guz Kahn (who plays Zulfi, Shah’s cousin) and Ahmed goof it up around London for a few episodes with a few Bond references tossed in for good measure. And, look, it certainly does do a good job with the classic comedy and drama elements – Ahemd and the rest of the writing staff have a deftness of touch when it comes to the family drama that hints at more than it reveals in a way that feels very true to the labyrinthine politics of any clan, and the dry comedy hits just right (Riz Ahmed asking his ex’s new boyfriend his height got a genuine belly-laugh out of me). But the show is far more than that – it’s a deft, weird, and vaguely psychadelic genre-bender that jumps between pop culture references from Bollywood to Bond and then some. Oh, and there’s a severed pig’s head voiced by Patrick Stewart. So, you know, it’s a lot.

And part of the reason the show is so eclectic is because it’s a show about identity – namely, Shah’s, and the various ways it’s challenged over the course of the four days between his two auditions. Bond is an excellent choice of role to build this character around, as he’s one who, in real life, has become a stand-in for a very specific kind of British masculinity. The character’s long history in film has come to represent a part of the British identity in pop culture; smooth, competent, sexually commanding, a charming rogue who doesn’t always play by the rules. And that status has, especially in recent years, come with its fair share of culture war nonsense – from hand-wringing over Daniel Craig carrying his baby to the ridiculous controversy every time an actor who is not white has their name breathed in the vicinity of the role to the backlash Lashana Lynch suffered for her involvement in the franchise as a black woman, it’s become a bit of a flashpoint for issues of Britishness, race, gender, and identity.

And the version of Bond that Shah invents for himself is very much representative of the standards of British masculinity that the various intersections of his identity have kept him from fulfilling. His race, his religion, his background all stand in opposition to embody the kind of classic British manhood – as much as those things don’t functionally have any bearing on masculinity or Britishness, they have been bestowed with a certain cultural and social weight that, for many people, are in direct contrast to the version that James Bond is representative of. Shah’s Bond – the one who comes after him, towards the end of the series, to snuff out those parts of him holding him back from the role – is besuited, smooth, confident, sure of himself, immune to the racist abuse and inner turmoil that has plagued and shaped him for so much of his life and career. I love the way the show’s metatextual storytelling uses this image of Bond as a symbol of Shah’s idealized self – but that’s just one aspect of how Bait handles Shah’s identity, or lack thereof.

Because Shah is, for much of the show, virtually void of character. He moves between situations, briefly and to varying degrees of success shifting in to the version of himself that he think will best serve the scenario – he’s a character who could be frustrating or inconsistent in the wrong hands, but Ahmed has such a command of the character that it never feels random or unfocused. His desperate groping to find some role that he fits in, whether in his personal or professional life, is downright fascinating. My favourite moment of the series comes at the climax of an excellent episode shared with his ex-girlfriend Yasmin (Ritu Arya); he shares a profound moment of seeming clarity with her on his personal life and struggles with identity, only for her to rightly identify it as nothing more than an audition speech. Even when he’s vulnerable, he has to cloak it under the guise of someone, something else.

Bait is a genuinely brilliant show, one that balances a sharp look at the nature of Britishness and masculinity as its conceived via pop culture and Shah’s existential crisis as a character more specifically. I’d love to hear what you thought of it, so let me know in the comments below! If you’d like to support my blog, please consider supporting me by buying my books or dropping me a tip via my Support page.

(header image via Rotten Tomatoes)