‘Bait’ series review: an existential, well-observed satire of identity and stardom
As the anticipation for the next James Bond casting announcement heats up, Bait is a clever fantasy about the crushing weight of cultural expectations.
Rumours about who will next wear 007’s tuxedo began midway through Daniel Craig’s run as the character, as speculation about the next Bond is a never-ending topic of popular culture discourse. The role of Bond isn’t one like Batman, Frankenstein, or Jack Ryan, in which multiple actors could play the part within a short period of time, and some interpretations quickly fade from public view.
Bond is a character who has become a representative of British culture, as each actor who occupies the role is tasked with giving their own interpretation, while remaining true to the essence of Ian Fleming’s source material. The next Bond doesn’t just have his face moulded into action figures and plastered over liquor commercials, but dines with the Royal Family and appears in official national media events.
The search to find the next Bond has become further complicated by the fact that the franchise is under the new ownership of Amazon Studios, who are tasked with finding a way to ensure the character’s relevancy during an era of theatrical uncertainty.
Gambling markets have pinpointed names like Callum Turner, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Jacob Elordi to be in the running, but it’s likely that any sharp British actor within the right age range has been floated, if their agent has any use. This is the premise of Amazon’s most inventive streaming series of 2026 thus far, Bait, which explores the impact that a Bond audition has on the life of a single actor.
Riz Ahmed might be out of the running at this point to play Bond, he’s already older than Craig was when he did Casino Royale, has earned an Academy Award nomination, and already appeared in franchises like Star Wars and Bourne, but he’s perfectly suited for the role of Shah Latif, the protagonist of Bait, who is a promising Pakistani-British actor on the verge of breaking the Internet.
Bait takes place in a fairly realistic version of reality in which the casting search for Bond has heated up, leading to intensified media attention when Shah is caught leaving an audition. While the headlines will give him an immediate boost in popularity, Shah knows that he has to retain a good public profile in order to ever be feasibly in contention for the role.
However, the effects of becoming a figurehead of the national identity are more complicated than what it will mean for Shah’s aspirations as an action star. The scrutiny will be on his entire recorded history, the full extent of his family, and most critically, his community and culture. While it remains to be seen if Amazon will actually be bold enough to cast a non-white actor in Denis Villeneuve’s Bond film, Bait explores the rupture that a Muslim man would go through when his faith and race are the subject of feverish op-eds.
Bait needed the name-recognition of Bond to justify its premise, as there could never be a fictional role created for the series that could better explain the stakes. If recent Hollywood satires like The Studio and Hacks have proven anything, it’s that it’s a lot easier to buy into fictional popular culture if there are fragments of reality. However, Bait doesn’t require any knowledge of the Bond mythology, as it is entirely about how Shah comes to reckon with his own identity.
He has ambitions as an actor that may or may not be satisfied by landing a major role in a studio franchise, but he also recognises that the chance to be enshrined in history will never be offered to him again. There’s the potential to generate family pride, but Shah also knows that he must curb his family’s impulses to say anything that could be misinterpreted. He also finds that he’s already on trial because the media sees anything cultural as political; he could feasibly help break barriers by becoming a hero that Muslim kids could look up to, but he could also be seen as assimilating to the ideals of a colonialist icon.
Bait handles these debates with humour and humanity, as it retains a zippy tone as it bounces between Shah’s public crises and personal confrontations. His family is portrayed as three-dimensional characters whose history feels lived in, with Guz Khan giving a particularly amusing performance as Shah’s cousin, Zulfi, who can’t help but attract unwanted attention. Given that the six episodes are all around 30 minutes in length, Bait is perfectly serialised while still taking advantage of an episodic medium.
The series does suffer from the fact that its conclusion feels inevitable, and that the flashbacks to Shah’s childhood with Zulfi feel extraneous. The inclusion of fantasised action scenes in which Shah reckons with his potential alter ego is entertaining, but they do sometimes feel mismatched with the more subtle social commentary that’s found in the quieter moments… Nonetheless, Bait transcends being a clever riff on an ongoing topic of debate and becomes a satisfying work of entertainment in its own right.
