Rafic Al-Sabban finds little to recommend on this year's Ramadan TV menu Ramadan TV serials account for almost all the month's entertainment. Theatres and cinemas hold out little hope of attracting an audience, with some movie houses closing altogether. TV as the entertainment of choice goes some way towards explaining the mad scramble of directors and actors to appear on the small screen during the month. It is a strategic choice of those intent on scrambling up the ladder of stardom. It has become, as well, a choice for those already established big screen names who seek by appearing in the annual soaps to reach an even wider audience or else further enhance their popularity. The American system, in which TV and cinema have produced separate stables of stars, has never taken hold in Egypt. In the US, of course, the division was present from the very beginnings of television, which became the vehicle for a new kind of performer who had quite possibly never appeared in front of a movie camera. We, however, burn our stars: after watching them throughout the year on the big screen, we sit glued to watch them for 30 consecutive nights in our homes. They are a commodity beamed into people's living rooms for an audience that no longer needs to go out and search for its stars. But then stardom, that once elusive quality, has little aura left, certainly not when screen heroes and heroines appear in commercials advertising whatever pays best. Thinking of the stars offered on the plate of this year's Ramadan TV -- they include, among others, Nour El-Sherif, Yehia El-Fakharani, Ilham Shahin, Layla Olwi, Mona Zaki, Samira Ahmed and Fifi Abdou -- it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly what they added to the Ramadan banquet. Did they make for a zestier sauce, a more piquant flavouring to dishes that would otherwise be the same as on every other day? The sad thing is they all seemed to be caught in rehashing earlier performance. It was very much a case of reheating the leftovers, and that's in terms of performances, apart from the vapid content of the serials and the endless thrashing of well worn themes. Nour El-Sherif's performance in Hadrat Al-Muttaham Abi (My Father, the Accused, with All Due Respect), is possibly an exception, as is Gamal Soliman's in Hada'iq Al-Shaytan (The Devil's Gardens). Soliman, a leading actor in Syrian serials, lent distinction to his role and his unfamiliar presence on Egyptian TV screens made otherwise hackneyed lines ring with novelty. It served to reinforce my conviction that there are talents for whom television is the natural turf, whose stars shine brightest on the small screen. El-Fakharani's performance, despite his popularity as a television actor, was repetitive and unoriginal. Layla Olwi managed to be wavering and inconsistent. Ilham Shahin made a stab at individuality in the kind of role she has not attempted before but lost out to a weakly-structured plot. Mervat Amin tried to make the best of a bad deal; Fifi Abdou suffered in a part she should have not touched with a barge pole while Samira Ahmed succeeded only in confirming her obsession with Faten Hamama when she returned to the screen in a serial that bears an uncanny resemblance to a 1960s film starring the latter. But as the saying goes, miracles happen but once. Mona Zaki made perhaps the biggest mistake of her career when she accepted to play the role of Soad Hosni, the Cinderella of Arab cinema. It was unflattering to both Zaki and the legendary actress. On the subject of biopics, the serial Al-Andalib (The Nightingale), a biography of the late singer Abdel-Halim Hafez, presented no new point of view on its subject matter. Although the serial showcased a new actor, he was so slavishly imitative of the mannerisms and gestures of the star that his performance spilled over into caricature. The biggest dramatic flaw in Al-Andalib is the parallelism it sets up between the late president Nasser's rise to power and Abdel-Halim's rise to stardom. It might have appeared a neat conceit to the scriptwriter, but unfortunately the legacies of a wildly popular singer and the man who became, for a time, the undisputed leader of the Arab nation, cannot be interchanged. The serials that attracted the largest audience were Hadrat Al-Muttaham Abi, Hada'iq Al-Shaytan and Sikket El-Hilali (El-Hilali's Way). Despite their widely differing standards all three were variations on the same theme, namely the pressure exerted by those in power, whether socially or politically, on the opposition, or those with integrity. It is obviously an important and timely theme, but one which none of the three serials succeeded in exploring fully, swamping issues beneath a plethora of detail that stood in the way of in-depth engagement. But again one should make an exception of Hadrat Al-Muttaham Abi on account of the superb performance of Nour El-Sherif. On the whole this year's Egyptian Ramadan TV serials plumbed even lower depths than last year's. By contrast, the real scoops were Arab serials which were of an exceptionally high quality in terms of both performances and production values. I would single out Awlad Al-Rasheed (The Sons of Al-Rasheed), which was exquisite in its details; Al-Mariqoun (The Heretics), directed by Nagdat Anzour, presenting a thoroughly researched and well executed depiction of terrorism in different parts in the Arab world; and Khalid Ibn Al-Walid, remarkably daring in its reading of history and its breaching of religious and political taboos. These three serials were a ray of light amid the prevailing darkness of this year's Ramadan television fare.
