A Pakistani newspaper recently raised a very valid question: why are there so few TV series on the country’s entertainment channels?
Despite the opening of a number of entertainment channels in the past decade, we have seen numerous TV serials, but few series. Don’t we have writers creative enough to conceive a new idea every week?
Even in the 1990s, when we had only two channels, one of them owned by the government, there were some very good series. Guest House produced from Islamabad in the early 1990s and Family Front written by Dr Younis Butt in the late 1990s were highly popular among the viewers.
These days we only have Bulbulay aired by ARY, but that has become stale after running successfully for years. There are some other series but those are mostly uninspiring. And one significant thing is that these are all comedy series. There has been no series covering serious subjects.
Even the serials that are coming out in large numbers have a very narrow range of ideas. They cover only the domestic life of Pakistani society — the issues of marriages, the tussles between daughters and mothers in law.
Most of the stories of the serials are taken from the number of digests that are published for the consumption of housewives and girls staying indoors. Mostly very pathetic stuff! The characters are very one-dimensional.
If a woman is bad, she has no redeeming quality. If a husband is cruel, he seems to have no other trait.
All this indicates that we have become a very uncreative or our power of observation has diminished. If this was not the case, we would have a number of television serials as well as series on bureaucracy, politics, corporate gimmicks, women trafficking, child abuse, child labour — there are so many issues. So writers please put some strain on your brains and present something fresh.
By Mikael Madani
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