Cairo Magazine - Small screen, high drama

Khairi Beshara has had run-ins with censorship officials and viewers over the "bad habits" of characters in his soaps.

Ahmad Hosni

Just like every Ramadan, families are spending quality holiday time together—around the television set. As much as everyone complains about the lame dialogues, cheap scenery and anachronistic details, they still can’t help checking out the season’s musalsalat (serial TV dramas).

Ramadan musalsalat have been a staple of Arab entertainment since the 1950s, when they started as radio shows. “I remember when I was a child, this time of broadcasting the serial, it was essential for my life,” says movie and musalsalat director Khairi Beshara. “I had to be in front of the radio.”

This year, an estimated $60 million has been spent to produce almost 100 of the 30-episode TV serials. Egypt had its usual lion’s share, producing about 30 of the shows.

For the most part, the usual big names star in the usual melodramatic fare. Yousra is a con-artist in Ahlam Aadia (Ordinary Dreams), while Yehia Fakharani plays an Egyptian patriot in Al Mars wa Al Bahar (The Harbor and the Seas). Leila Elwi, meanwhile, incarnates a harried tourism operator whose hostile ex-husband holds a high position in the Ministry of Tourism in Nour Al Sabah (The Morning Light).

A show that has generated some interest is Amakin fil Qalb (Places in the Heart), a soap starring Ola Ghanem as an Egyptian woman living in the US after 9/11 who is falsely accused of murdering her American husband. There is also a remake of the famous 1950s film Raya wa Sakina, starring Abla Kamel and Sumaya Khashab as the murderous Alexandrian sisters. The enormously popular soap opera Rafat Al Haggan, about an Egyptian secret agent living a double life in Israel, has also been remade. The new musalsal entitled Al Aamil 1001 (Agent 1001), stars Mustafa Shaaban and is on ART in the early afternoons and late evenings. Reportedly produced with an eye to the anniversary of the 6 October War and the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the mukhabarat al amma (intelligence services), the series isn’t being aired by any of the terrestrial channels, leading to speculation that it may have been deemed too controversial.

Although they are produced by government-controlled entities and subject to censorship, a few musalsalat every year still manage to cause trouble. Last year, channels stopped showing Tariq li Kabul (The Road to Kabul)—about mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1990s—after it angered Islamist groups. A few years before, a serial that lent credence to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic hoax from Tsarist Russia, caused indignant US and Israeli reactions.

Many involved in the production of musalsalat say there are few restrictions nowadays. “You can say anything now… except about the president!” says scriptwriter Mohammed Amer. But others paint a different picture. “No sex, no kisses, no cigarettes…” lists Beshara, who says he has been approached by people in the street complaining about the licentious behavior of fictional characters. The vast majority of musalsalat abide by these rules and “are commercial,” Beshara adds. “They don’t take a deep look at political or social issues.”

Yet though the plots and decors of most soaps seem to differ little from year to year, the industry is undergoing some changes. For one thing, production schedules on Egyptian soaps have been tightened. On the day before Ramadan at Media Production City (MPC)—which along with fellow government operations Saut Al Qahira and Qitaa Al Intag dominates television production—the sets were deserted. One MPC employee explained that the Minister of Culture ruled that all soap operas be done filming before Ramadan started. “It used to be that they’d be filming the final episode the day before it aired,” the employee said.

Syria is also posing an ever-increasing challenge to Egypt, producing 23 soaps this year. The Syrians are renowned for their historical dramas, which often have higher production values than Egyptian shows. Actress Soheir Al Babli, who is making her return to the small screen after a 10-year hiatus after taking the veil, says that “now there is competition between all Arab countries, a competition which is good for the musalsalat. Through it the scriptwriter improves and the actors improve because all their work comes out on the Arab scene and everyone wants to be better than each other.”

But not surprisingly, most Egyptian actors and directors claim that their country’s shows will always be the most popular. This is for two reasons, says scriptwriter Amer: “Egyptians actors are very well-loved, and no other dialect is understood like the Egyptian dialect.”