I’m not a Pakistani living in Britain. I’m not navigating two passports or code-switching between English and Urdu depending on who’s in the room. I live in Pakistan. And yet, watching Bait, I felt seen in a way I genuinely didn’t expect.
Bait: This is your spoilers review. Read at your own risk
First Things First: The Cast Carried
Riz Ahmed as Shah Latif is an obvious win — he’s doing what he does best, which is making you feel every layer of a man who is simultaneously too much and not enough. But the show really breathes because of the people around him.
Guz Khan as Zulfi is an absolute scene-stealer. Every time he speaks, it’s either an insult or a one-liner, and somehow both land with the same energy. Sajid Hassan and Sheeba Chaddha as the parents are painfully, wonderfully real — no sugarcoating, no softening, just desi parents being exactly what desi parents are. And Soni Razdan, even in a smaller role, brings that quiet weight she always does. The ensemble feels like a community, not a casting list. And that matters.
The Comedy Is Doing Heavy Lifting (And Loving It)
Bait is genuinely, consistently funny — and not in a safe, crowd-pleasing way. The humour has teeth. Most of it comes from Zulfi, who spends a significant portion of the show absolutely roasting Shah in the most specific, merciless, fraternal way possible. The kind of roasting that only works because it comes from someone who loves you and has known you long enough to know exactly where to aim.
But the comedy also comes from the show’s willingness to be absurd. A Bond audition. Patrick Stewart as the voice of Shah’s anxiety and the pig’s head high-key creepy. The show commits to the bit every single time, and that commitment is what makes it land. And then there’s the Eid hosting episode. The battle over which family gets to host — the politics, the pride, the absolutely unhinged amount of effort that goes into it — is one of the funniest things I’ve watched in a long time. It’s funny because it’s real.
The Urdu cussing throughout deserves its own mention — low-key, casual, exactly how it sounds in real life. Not performed for effect, not subtitled with dramatic flair. Just there, the way it is in every desi household. It made the whole thing feel thora apna apna.
Riz Losing His Mind is Painfully Watchable
The central premise — Shah in the running for James Bond, unraveling over four chaotic days — sounds almost too clever. But it works because the chaos isn’t played for cheap laughs. It’s played for truth.
Shah is a man caught between who he is, who the industry wants him to be, and who he thinks he should want to be. He doesn’t fast during Ramadan but uses it as an excuse. He filters his IMDb photo to look lighter. He wants the representation win without quite having done the internal work to know what it even means to him. And in that mess of contradictions, something deeply familiar shows up — the anxiety of not being enough, and the equal anxiety of being too much.
Riz Ahmed’s physical comedy in the later episodes especially is brilliant — the kind of acting that looks effortless because it’s so completely inhabited. He’s playing a man whose situation has become funny because it’s so desperate, and that distinction is everything.
The Bullying Bit: Small Scene, Long Shadow
There’s a moment in the show where Shah’s past comes up — the schoolboy slurs, being called a ‘Paki,’ the low-level cruelty that shapes a person before they even have the language to name what’s happening to them. It’s not dwelt on. It’s not made into a big dramatic flashback. But it explains so much about who Shah is as an adult — why he’s so hungry for validation, why he’s so quick to fold under pressure, why he hasn’t fully made peace with his own identity even at a stage in life when you’d think he should have.
And here’s the thing: you don’t have to be Pakistani British to understand what that does to a person. Bullying that targets who you are — your name, your background, your faith, your appearance — leaves a particular kind of mark. It makes you spend years trying to figure out whether to fight it, hide it, or reclaim it. Shah is still in that loop. Watching him, you understand why.
The Pakistani Parents Were Shown As Is. No Edits.
This deserves its own section. Pakistani parents on screen are usually one of two things: absent, or cartoonishly traditional. Bait gives us Tahira and Parvez as they actually are — full of love, full of stubbornness, full of their own quiet convictions. Parvez refuses to see a doctor because he thinks medicine is a scam. Tahira’s overprotectiveness masks an insecurity that the show treats with real tenderness.
They’re just people. Fully drawn, a little infuriating, completely recognizable. And because they’re shown that way, their them actually land.
The Themes Go Beyond Postcodes
Now here’s where it gets interesting — because I’m watching this from Pakistan, and I’m not navigating dual identity in the way Shah is. And yet, the show is about the distance between who you are and who the world decides you should be. It’s about what happens when your identity becomes a political talking point before you’ve even figured out what it means to you personally. It’s about family love that is real and suffocating at the same time. It’s about wanting to be seen for your work and constantly being seen for your background instead.
You don’t need a British passport for any of that to resonate. The representation conversation in Bait is also more honest than most. It doesn’t present a Brown face in a franchise as an automatic win. Yasmin writes an article saying there’s no need for a brown James Bond. Zulfi tears Shah apart for thinking that getting the role would fix anything. The show knows that visibility without structural change is just aesthetics, and it’s not shy about saying so.
That Restaurant Scene, Though
The long, unbroken single-shot scene with Shah and Yasmin — starting inside the restaurant, flowing through to the back, spilling out onto the streets — is stunning. The camera doesn’t cut. It just follows. And in doing so, it forces you to sit in the discomfort and tension and weird electricity between them without relief.
It’s Not Just for the Diaspora. It’s for Anyone Who Gets It.
Yes, the specific setting is Pakistani British. The Urdu, the Wembley row house, the London desi community, the particular texture of that life. But the emotional truth of Bait is not location-specific.The hunger to be taken seriously. The exhaustion of carrying your identity like a responsibility you never signed up for. The way you can love your family and still feel the weight of their expectations like something physical. The strange grief of wanting belonging somewhere that keeps making you prove yourself.
Watching from Pakistan, I didn’t feel like I was peering into someone else’s story. I felt like I was watching something that understood something true — about ambition, about identity, about what it costs to want to be seen.
Bait is different. In a good way. It’s funny without being easy. It’s political without being preachy. It’s personal without completely disappearing into itself. It’s a show made by people who know exactly what they’re talking about, and it shows.
Watch it with the right mindset. Watch it ready to laugh and then immediately feel something. And if you’ve ever had to think twice about who you are in a room — any room, anywhere — there’s something in Bait that’s going to find you. That’s what good storytelling does. Doesn’t matter where you’re watching from.
Comments 1