James Bond is an integral part of Bait, but Bait is not a James Bond TV show. Good evening, Mr. Bond fans. Today, we're going to be talking about something of a bizarre James Bond adjacent curio in the form of a six-part comedy series from Amazon MGM titled Bait. RZ Ahmed plays Char Latif, a working actor who in the very first scene of the show is auditioning for the role of James Bond. Photographs of him leaving the audition go viral and the series follows how his life is impacted by the sudden influx of attention.
His relationships with his family and loved ones are strained and he begins a parasocial relationship with a severed pig's head. It's a comedy. The series released on Amazon on March 25th, 2026. And look, this is a James Bond centric YouTube channel. So ultimately, I'm going to be using this video to let you know my thoughts on whether or not this series is worth a Bond fan's time, but also just whether or not the series is worth watching from the perspective of being a good British comedy because I do think Bates kind of straddles those two different pillars of interest.
But um let's get started by talking about the James Bond element of this whole thing. And the first thing that I want to talk about is like, you know, would this series work if they hadn't used the name James Bond? If they'd made up another fictional hero that existed within the universe of the show that Riz Ahmed was auditioning for, like, you know, instead of James Bond, it's John Shelf. I guess it kind of would, but using James Bond in the way that they do creates a really great shorthand for just understanding immediately. They don't need to go into exposition about how, oh, the John Shelf series is really popular and it's a tradition for that role to be played by different actors over the years. No, we don't need to go into any of that because everyone coming into this knows who James Bond is. Even if you haven't seen any of the James Bond movies, you probably know who the character is. I mean, he's like Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man. It's like I think there are most people on the planet probably are aware of who the character is.
But also, I think one of the more appealing elements of Bait and how they use James Bond in this way is that Riz Ahmed himself has been the subject of James Bond casting rumors over the years. And it does lend that extra meta quality that I think would be lost if yeah, if Ahmed was auditioning for the role of MI6 agent John Shelf.
Though there is, of course, the cynical side of me that is aware that by using a recognized real-world fictional character like James Bond, you know, they're increasing the awareness of the series because it is tangentially attached to a global phenomenon that it wouldn't be otherwise. Can you believe there are probably people out there checking out this series entirely on the basis of it mentioning James Bond a few times? But the fact of the matter is that Riz Ahmed created this series. He's playing the lead character and I think that the meta qualities of him playing an actor auditioning for the role of James Bond or at least rumored for the role of James Bond. I think he has earned the right to tell that story from his perspective. And it gives I think it gives the series an authenticity and a perspective that we wouldn't have if this was just some you know studio commissioned algorithm-minded project where you took a popular writer and a different actor and just mushed them together. It is Riz Ahmed's show and I think that that gives it a specific perspective that I think brings a lot to the table.
Now just to talk about Riz Ahmed in a bit more detail. I really do love Riz Ahmed. I think that he is a very dependable presence. I've seen him in a lot of stuff and obviously in Bait Ahmed is not playing himself. He's playing a character, but there are definitely parallels and bits that I can imagine are Ahmed drawing on from his own real-life experiences. And I certainly don't mean to imply that this is some kind of vanity project on the part of Riz. The character he plays is far from perfect. And I'm going to keep this video spoiler-free, certainly outside of the first episode that is, and I'm going to mention this because it does happen early on, but I do think it's quite cool that he is the conscious maker of his own problem as far as the whole series is concerned. Yeah, he's photographed leaving the audition, but he kind of manufactures that moment and he's thinking about like how he can use this to his advantage.
The actor as he is presented, the character that is as he is presented in the series is yeah, I don't get the sense that he's supposed to be the best actor in his universe, but he's certainly going to try and stack the deck to try and get the James Bond gig. And certainly at first he seemed to be quite enjoying a lot of the attention that the speculation is bringing. It becomes a bit of a thing in some of the early episodes that he is this kind of opportunistic figure and he's trying to figure out, you know, what the PR angles of certain situations are that could make him look more favorable for the part.
It's things like, you know, he's mingling in circles that he thinks will ultimately be to his benefit. He's trying to create this impression of this smooth, successful actor. That's like what he wants his public profile to be when the reality is quite far removed from that. He has an agent who we see a few times throughout the series and you know they talk about the realities of these things when it comes to old social media posts and things like that that could potentially cost him the part. The whole exploration of the PR side of the whole James Bond casting circus I thought was quite interesting.
At a certain point of the series, we're of course experiencing Char living the dream. He's wearing the swanky suits. He's going to these fancy gatherings. He's got his cousin working as his bodyguard. But a lot of this is obviously a front. He's actually from quite a humble background and we see in one episode he's he was wearing this I think it's a Prada jumper and he's going to be returning it to the shop because it's all about him presenting as a certain way. It's a kind of fake it till you make it mentality. But there are of course pitfalls to that attitude and that is a recurring thread throughout the series.
I do also think it's important to note here that I do not think that Bait is some kind of gigantic conspiratorial promotional piece and that in a few months' time we're actually going to see Riz Ahmed actually has been cast as James Bond. I saw people posting some theories like that online and I you know think you know we will get to talking about the marketing in a bit but if that was Amazon's plan they really fumbled it because I have not seen this thing marketed all that much at all. They definitely don't shy away from discussing racial politics either because obviously Char is a British Muslim man being rumored for Bond. And it's a major theme of this series.
They call it out in the first episode, his own cousin's like, "Well, you can't play James Bond. James Bond's white." And I really don't think that the series takes a simplistic approach to the, you know, the toxicity around these debates when we see it on news programs all the time and stuff where they get two people at opposing ends of the scale to just like argue for 10 minutes at a time. And this series doesn't really go into that all that much. I think it is more about Char from his character perspective. There are people within his own British Muslim community that do look down on him because of being a prospective candidate for James Bond. A big part of it is how Char is perceived within his own British Muslim community. It's a major theme and the idea that Char moves further and further away from that community the more he tries to assimilate with the kind of persona that he thinks a James Bond candidate should have which is ultimately incompatible with his heritage and upbringing in a lot of ways.
I think there's a really solid supporting cast in here, too. Guz Khan is Char's cousin in this, and I like Guz Khan. He's a bit of a common figure on comedy programs and whatnot here in the UK. I think he has some very funny scenes and funny lines throughout this. Maxine Peak is here for a couple of scenes in the first and last episodes. I love her. I kind of wanted her to be in it a bit more, but she's playing this kind of like irritated director who's directing the screen tests. And I like in the first episode in particular, she's got that thing where you can tell she's really pent up and really angry and just kind of wants to snap at someone, but she's trying to keep it contained and sort of like be polite and civil.
Patrick Stewart is here, which was a bit of a surprise performance. It's I'm not spoiling too much by saying it's a voice only performance. And at first I was like, "Oh, okay." They couldn't get him in physically to do this because Riz Ahmed his character is on like a podcast being hosted by Patrick Stewart and I was like, "Oh, okay." Right. It was still, you know, a last-minute sort of celebrity booking kind of thing. But then there's a fun reveal as to what he's actually voicing. And I'm not going to spoil it in this video, but I thought it was really funny. There's a kind of a whole tangent between him and Riz Ahmed throughout a few episodes that honestly one of my highlights of the whole series.
Episodes are generally speaking like, you know, 22, 23, 24 minutes long. So they're nice and snackable. You can watch the whole thing basically as a slightly over 2-hour long movie if you really wanted to. I it feels very self-contained to me. I would be very surprised if there was another series to come along. I feel like it's a series with a point and it gets that across very succinctly and well in its six episodes. So, I, I don't know where you would take this from a season two onwards. I guess you'd actually just have him fully cast as James Bond and then it'd be him coming to terms with the fame and whatever, but I I don't think that that would I yeah, I I don't feel like that would make much sense as a natural continuation.
So, coming down to my answer to the question whether or not this series is worth a couple of hours of a Bond fan's time. And what I'll say, this is sort of tied into, um, some thoughts I have about the marketing for this series, um, because what I think has been one of the most interesting elements of the marketing, other than the fact that I don't feel like there's been all that much of it, um, but how little it has actually leaned into James Bond tropes in its promo material. Like, yeah, obviously Riz Ahmed is wearing a tuxedo in the posters and James Bond is mentioned in the trailers, but there's no Bond theme. There's no gun barrel motif for or at least not overtly. I think this cloud formation on the poster ends up having a bit of a gun barrel flavor to it with the whole fisheye lens effect. But my point is that they could have sold this as a James Bond TV show and they didn't do that, and I think that was the entirely correct thing to do.
I think a big part of the problem with another Amazon James Bond adjacent TV series 007 road to a million is that they marketed it almost like it was a Bond film, but it's a false equivalence to lead a potential audience to believe that, oh, if you like Skyfall, you'll love this reality show. And I think it's a mistake you see with a lot of entertainment brands when they try to cover so many different audience demographics and yet sit all that same programming under the same brand umbrella that it becomes confusing.
Using Star Wars as an example, it's like having the original movies and then a series like Andor and then something like the Lego Star Wars Christmas special, like all sitting next to each other on a streaming service because it's under the Star Wars umbrella. It's all part of that franchise, but they're targeting different things, different demographics. And I don't think necessarily like, oh, if you watched and enjoyed Andor, go and watch the Lego Christmas special because it's it's a different thing and yet it sits under that same umbrella. And so I'm glad that Amazon seem to be treating this more as just, oh, it's it's a new quirky British comedy, which is ultimately what it is. James Bond is an integral part of Bait, but Bait is not a James Bond TV show.
Now, I really enjoyed watching Bait. I thought it was funny, thought-provoking, quite sweet and emotional in places, and I think it's a novel way for a series to use the James Bond name in a way that is meaningful and unique. But in the words of James Bond himself, it's not for everyone. Bait is definitely something to check out if you are a fan of British comedy series, like not necessarily just because of the Bond connection. You know, it's not as if they're like dropping in like subtle references to the movies that they know that fans are going to pick up on.
Like yeah, I mean there's some funny lines in it. Like I like when it's the initial sort of the family are reacting to Riz Ahmed potentially being cast as James Bond and the dad says something along the lines of did Craig Daniel die and Sean Connery gets a mention and the you know so so there are a couple of things in there but it's generally not like they're not just dropping in references because they know that the Bond fans are going to pick up on it. It's a comedy series that's Bond adjacent but not relying on an understanding of anything other than James Bond as kind of like you know a big pop culture figure to get the gags. Do let me know your own thoughts in the comments section below. Have I undersold this as sort of like a tangentially connected to James Bond thing or do you think I kind of got it right in terms of pitching this at more British comedy fans than at Bond fans?
