In Bait TV series, Riz Ahmed uses absurd humour to explore those James Bond rumours

Ahmed, Riz Ahmed.

The speculation over who will be the next James Bond is a self-perpetuating circus that has run for years, well before Daniel Craig handed back his Walther PPK.

One name that has been in the mix has been Ahmed, a British actor, filmmaker and musician who has graced the likes of Sound of Metal, Fingernails and Venom.

Ahmed is highly talented, already halfway to an EGOT, having won an Emmy for his performance in The Night Of and an Oscar for his short film, The Long Goodbye. The only Bond actor to have done that is Sean Connery — the others have barely been nominated.

He is now, likely, too old (he’s 43) to take on the role, and he is also, as he joked on Jimmy Fallon last week, shorter than the traditional Bond actor (he’s five-foot-eight-and-a-half). But as he asked in the same segment, why not?

The other aspect that has gone against the London-born Ahmed is that his cultural heritage is Pakistani, and there are sectors of the population (ahem, racists, ahem) who will never accept a non-white James Bond (just as they do not for a raft of other characters and feel perfectly OK to send death threats to the actors who dare).

That’s central to the conceit of Ahmed’s new comedy series, Bait, which he also created.

Ahmed is not playing himself, fictionalised or otherwise, but he is tapping into a conversation that he has been a part of, willingly or not.

The show is about Shah Latif, a struggling London actor, who has wrangled himself an audition for Bond. He stuffs up his shot, unable to even get out the lines, but on his way out of the studio, he is snapped by a waiting photographer camped outside.

The photo is picked up by a tabloid newspaper, and it goes viral, just as any scrap of Bond-related news is in the real world – remember when it was rumoured Aaron Taylor-Johnson had been screen-tested for the role two years ago?

Fame is a double-edged sword. Shah is really excited at the doors that might open up to him, including an opportunity to re-audition, but the reaction is not all that he was expecting.

Soon, a decapitated pig’s head is thrown through the window of his parents’ home, as the online discourse turns nasty. Plus, it’s Ramadan, with Eid coming up and Shah’s newfound notoriety is adding to the chaos of his family.

He tries to hire security for his parents’ home, while fending off his entrepreneurial cousin Zulfi’s (Guz Khan) attempt to install “grey market” surveillance cameras.

The pressure is piling on, as he thinks everyone is either turning on him or disappearing on him, and he starts conversing with an object voiced by Patrick Stewart, a manifestation of his own worst thoughts about himself.

It descends into a full existential crisis.

Bait is much more absurd than the topline premise might suggest, and Ahmed and his collaborators carefully manage the chaos coursing through Shah’s life, some of it of his own making.

Stylistically, it plays with different genres including a Bond or Bourne-esque spy thriller, obviously, and it ramps up the frenzied energy as Shah’s sense of grounding deteriorates.

It’s a really clever series that engages with questions of identity and place as a Pakistani-British man trying to carve out a place for himself in the public eye, and to be seen by his own family and community – if only he could figure out who he is and who he wants to be.

There is a meta element to it, but Shah is nowhere near as successful as Ahmed.

Still, these are questions Ahmed has likely faced at various points throughout his career, and you suspect that certain scenes, such as being mistaken for Dev Patel on the street only for someone else to claim that he’s neither as tall or handsome as Patel, probably happened in some form.

Ahmed has cast from the UK’s pool of South Asian actors, including guest turns from Himesh Patel and Industry’s Sagar Radia, and it’s a cornucopia of talent, particularly Aasiya Shah, a firecracker presence who plays his character’s sister.

Ahmed has proven himself to be not just a captivating screen presence but a smart filmmaker who can draw from a different well of stories. His film Mogul Mowgli, which he co-wrote and produced, also pulsed with exciting energy, and his director from that, Bassam Tariq directed many of the episodes on Bait.

Bait will, uh, bait you with its James Bond hook, but then it morphs into a much more interesting and hilarious story.

Oh, and Ahmed looks bloody good in a tux.

Bait is streaming on Prime Video