April Binges Part 1: Bait & Taskaree

Haven't been watching enough TV about South Asians? Well, here I am with two VERY different miniseries. One is a British comedy-drama about the pressure of representing the South Asian community (and particularly Muslims) in the UK, while the other is a classic Bollywood action-drama about the customs officers at Mumbai's International Airport. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Bait: Created by and starring Riz Ahmed, this is the story of a struggling British actor named Shahjehan "Shah" Latif (Ahmed), who is auditioning to be the next James Bond. Obviously, this role comes with a lot of meaning - Bond is considered a quintessentially British role, that has hitherto only been played by white male actors. Naturally, it would be a coup for Shah, a British Pakistani Muslim, to get this role. But the significance of it leads him into a spiral of self-sabotage. We are also introduced to his family, consisting of a doting mother, Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha), jokey father, Parvez (Sajid Hasan), and two cousins who were raised with him, Zulfi (Guz Khan) and Q (Asiya Shah). 

This is a short and sharp show, only six episodes, under thirty minutes long, so I don't want to get into much detail. You have to let the wildness of the show unfold for yourself, but suffice to say, it does a brilliant job of capturing the South Asian immigrant experience, the particular nastiness of the racism faced by South Asians in Britain (be prepared for the P-word to be deployed a lot), and the difficulties of straddling both your brown community and the white one you're trying to integrate into. 

All of the scenes with Shah's family felt like something that could have been filmed during any of my family gatherings (well, with slightly less drama and destruction, of course), and at the center of it all, we have Riz Ahmed, with those big, expressive eyes, conveying a world of hurt, humiliation, and confusion as he tries to navigate this very weird situation he has been put into. The show was not as funny as I wanted it to be, but it was certainly a chaotically good time and a wonderful addition into the TV genre of layered South Asian representation. If you're looking for something fresh and new, this is exactly what you seek.

Taskaree: Are you looking for layers? Then move right along. With this show, created by Neeraj Pandey, you're going to get a rather typical Bollywood masala action romp, with a little dash of romance and plenty of police brutality. This show thoroughly lacks any nuance, but it's still a very fun ride with plenty of twists and turns, so you will have a good time, as long as you turn your brain off first. 

Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun Meena, a customs officer in Mumbai's International Airport who has a reputation for taking his job seriously and being incorruptible in a profession that is otherwise well known to be full of people who are willing to look the other way if offered a nice little bribe. When a new commissioner, Prakash Kumar (Anurag Sinha) is brought in to crack down on all the international smuggling that goes through the airport, Arjun and his most trusted colleagues are brought together on a task force to help bring down a criminal syndicate headed by Bada Choudhary (Sharad Kelkar). Bada has couriers operating out of Al Dera (for some reason, a fictional city that is just a stand-in for the UAE), Ethiopia, and Milan, so what follows is a very international escapade told with a great deal of Bollywood flair. 

The story is fast-paced, every episode ends with an amazing cliffhanger, and as long as you suspend your disbelief at points, you are promised a great time. It's only seven episodes long and makes for a quick and dirty binge, so settle down on your couch. Also, your Hindi vocabulary is really going to expand as you learn more about smuggling terminology and the layers of Indian intelligence bureaucracy than you could have ever expected. So, it's fun AND educational!