Hani Mustafa takes the subject matter of serial drama to pieces For decades now Ramadan has been the high season for TV producers. It's a time of year during which families are obliged to pay each other visits, spending far more time in the household than usual. What to do when they run out of conversation in the hours after breaking their fast? But switch on the television, of course! This is particularly true of the first two weeks of the month, when family-oriented socialising is most compulsory. And, seeing as there will be no escape from television, no one likes anything more than a good drama. Up until the 1990s, when the Arab satellites invaded the household, there was not much competition in this department as there was practically only one producer and subject matter rarely varied as a result. Now the makers of the musalsal - the TV serial, intensify their efforts to present the viewer with something new, different and compelling. They want to catch the viewer during those first few days when the post-Iftar gathering conducts a survey of the satellite channels to see what they have to offer. Paradoxically, this obsessive drive to cater to the middle of the middle results in more of the same: year after year only the most daring writers and directors take the risk of truly varying their output. A theme like espionage, for example, has consistently recurred, most notably in the 1980s with Dumou' fi Uyoun Waqihah (Tears in insolent eyes), starring Adel Imam, and the beginning of the 1990s with Ra'fat El-Haggan, starring Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz; both are based on secret intelligence files, both play on patriotic sentiment and the thriller technique, both are set between Egypt and a different part of the world. This year script writer Youssri El-Guindi and director Khaled Bahgat offer another serial in that tradition, Man Atlaq Al-Rasas ala Hind Allam? (Who shot at Hind Allam), starring Nadia El-Guindi, which uses the flash-back device in the same way as the three-part Ra'fat El-Haggan ; in the latter case, the late director Yehia El-Alami was widely criticised for using this device while the first part was being broadcast. And yet this is not the only problem with that serial. Based on the real-life case of a drug-dealing MP and an Egyptian nuclear physicist murdered abroad, in the 1990s and 1980s respectively, El-Guindi infuses the drama with too much political moralising, in the altogether unimaginative framework of trying to find the answer to the question the title comprises. Not a very exciting story... Another kind of drama that has also played on patriotism is that which relies on recent history, especially the period surrounding the 1952 Revolution, offering a kind of TV equivalent of Naguib Mahfouz's early work (about a much earlier period in the 20th century), with the five-part Layali El-Helmiya (Nights of Helmiya) - written by Osama Anwar Okasha and directed by Ismail Abdel-Hafez, the soap opera was screened in five, non-consecutive years - being the most popular example. On many occasions it kept millions of viewers glued to the screen to watch not only virtuoso performances by Yehya El-Fakharani and Salah El-Saadani - among others - but to follow the trail of their own history through several decades as portrayed by representative characters responding to social transformations to which the viewer could personally relate. This created a dramatic depth that not only accounts for the popularity of the serial but brings out the potential of making social history the subject matter of this kind of drama. This year writer Walid Youssef and director Sharafeddin El-Sherif carry on the tradition on a smaller scale with yet another instance of that kind of drama that relies on a central, representative character - a kind at which Nur El-Sherif, the lead actor, excelled in such dramas as Lan A'ish fi Gilbab Abi (I will not live in my father's robes) and A'ilat Al-Hag Metwalli (Hag Metwalli's Family) - El-Daly, which nonetheless adopts a dramatic structure not unlike that of Man Atlaq Al-Rasas ala Hind Allam?, starting with the attempted assassination of Saad El-Daly, housing minister and business tycoon under Sadat, and proceeding as a flashback. Yet the first few episodes managed to raise expectations about the character with conversations that periodically affirm and deny his having been corrupt and ruthless - the very image of capitalist evil, in fact. One distinct feature of the Egyptian musalsal is the moralistic component: the tendency to concentrate on the moral implications of the characters' choices regarding the situations they go through, and to include as much preaching as the director sees fit for the benefit of the edification of the audience. This may be seen as a degeneration of an intellectual if not necessarily aesthetic issue: the moral collapse of the Egyptian people and the tendency to look back on an earlier time with nostalgia. The moralistic component is almost never absent from Egyptian serial dramas despite their extensive history and range. But there is a whole separate tradition entirely dedicated to that same moral question, the most glowing example of which was perhaps Abna'i Al-A'izaa' Shukran (My dear children, thank you), starring the late Abdel-Moneim Madbouli and directed by Mohamed Fadel in the late 1970s. It is possible to see Qadeyat Ra'i A'am (A case of public opinion) as yet another example of this tradition. The most noteworthy aspect of this serial so far is the rape scene in the first episode, which included a warning asking people under 18 to refrain from watching it, which lasted for a full 10 minutes and, though hardly explicit in any way, conveyed the ugliness of the situation in a lifelike way. Since then the serial has proceeded along the usual, socially oriented moralistic lines, and it remains to be seen whether there will be anything else that is noteworthy about it.
