Riz Ahmed returns to TV with own comedy series greenlit by Prime Video

Amazon-owned streamer Prime Video has ordered a half-hour comedy series created by British actor Riz Ahmed, who will write, produce and star.

Riz Ahmed (photo: redcarpetreporttv.com via CC)

The as-yet-untitled project is produced by Jax Media and Amazon MGM Studios, with Ben Karlin (Modern Family, The Colbert Report) attached to executive produce and showrun alongside Ahmed.

For Ahmed, who created the show under his production banner Left Handed, the project represents his first TV project since 2017, when he starred in HBO’s The Night Of and had a guest starring role in HBO’s Girls.

The new show follows a struggling actor on the cusp of landing the role of a lifetime who finds himself thrust into an existential crisis and trippy conspiracy thriller all at the same time.

Executive producers include Ahmed and Allie Moore for Left Handed, Jake Fuller for Jax Media and Roopesh Parekh (Willow, His Dark Materials).

The writing team includes Dipika Guha, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, Karen Joseph Adcock, Azam Mahmood and novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza.

Amazon MGM Studios’ head of television Vernon Sanders called Ahmed a “gifted writer, actor, and producer,” and noted that the project is being guided by Amazon’s pan-English team, led by Rola Bauer.