In 2010, Riz Ahmed starred in Chris Morris’s Four Lions, one of the most daring films that could conceivably be made about British Muslims. As a comedy about a homegrown cell of aspiring terrorists, it is simultaneously murderous and sympathetic. Its cast – half vicious Mujahedin, half dozy fools – hopes that heavenly martyrdom will be one long “Rubber Dinghy Rapids” ride and curses Boots for selling “condoms that make you want to bang white girls”. The film remains an authentically disturbing experience, well beyond the range of any stand-up cringe. Ahmed, who initially turned down his role as the cell’s frontman, later changed his mind, saying that it “challenged stereotypes”.
Released five years after 7/7, and cheerfully mirroring some of its events, Four Lions hardly came at a mellow time for British Muslims. But the mood feels even harsher today, after a 15-year period in which Muslims have increasingly come to be viewed as an approaching barbarian horde, paddling over seas and oceans, as well as the enemy within British society. And this sharpening of temper might go some way to explaining the softer and more human tone of Bait, a new comedy-drama series about British Muslim life created by and starring Riz Ahmed.
Ahmed was once speculatively linked with the role of James Bond; Bait might signify his withdrawal from the running. Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a semi-successful actor with a very similar biography to Ahmed (raised in Wembley; hip-hop side hustle; Oxford-educated; and proudly Muslim). Shah is auditioning (badly) for the role of the next Bond. And while he has no real chance – too short, and he can’t remember his lines – he skilfully arranges for himself to be photographed leaving the studio, and becomes an overnight Bond front-runner.
It’s a clever conceit, and a clever use of the Bond cinematic universe by its new owners Amazon – much of the Bond mythos is really extra-fictional, and surrounds Bond’s real-life status as a British masculine icon. And that is where most of the comedy in Bait flows from, the culture war initiated by speculation over Shah’s casting (“Edgy POC candidate” or “Refugee Bond”), and the tension between Shah’s mainstream ambitions and his Muslim family. The situational comedy part of this is affectionate. There is a good, if obvious, gag early on about Shah being mistaken for Dev Patel (which feels autobiographical). Shah’s family speak Urdu in their household, and are all warmly drawn (one wonders, given their well-established presence in British life, if Muslim comics’ jokes around the stereotypes of Muslim families could become Britain’s answer to American Jewish-family jokes). In a great running refrain, Shah’s cousin Zulfi runs a Muslim rival to Uber (“MUBA”), an experiment in community-led concierge that Shah nonetheless dismisses: “Uber in London’s already Muslim! Every driver’s named Abdi!”
But then there are moments of genuine tension, bringing out a sharper, more inventive comedy. When his casting as Bond is first mooted, Shah fears his more political hip-hop lyrics might be dredged up to attack him (“There’s videos of me online fucking pissing on the British flag!”). And at the end of the first episode, a pig’s head is thrown through the window of Shah’s family home, in protest at his potential casting. Rather than abandon this incident, though, it is taken further with darker effect: Shah stashes the head in his garage freezer and monologues at it, imagining the voice of Sir Patrick Stewart (“Sir Pigtrick”) speaking back to him.
The tone is never settled, though, and the third episode attempts something more emotionally fraught: Shah wrestles between his career and his family’s Eid celebrations. Ahmed never seems quite sure what he’s set out to create here – a satire, or a tribute to British Muslim life. Like Four Lions, though with less edge, Bait does succeed in the obvious but necessary task of depicting Muslims as typical Brits – having them swear, and drink, and joke – in ways that dissolve right-wing stereotypes of a fundamentalist, joyless mass. But all great comedy requires, as Henri Bergson once put it, a “momentary anaesthesia of the heart”. If Riz Ahmed has created a comedy that nibbles but never bites, it is for the very sympathetic reason that he has not numbed his heart.
Bait
Amazon Prime
[Further reading: Artemis, the Moon and the case for utopia]
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This article appears in the 08 Apr 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The Fall
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