Since the January 2011 Revolution, many television series have sought to mix political subject matter into their basic dramatic stew. Yet the makers of these shows have evidently had no clear views on the political situation, for despite frequent, fast shifts in the zeitgeist over the last three years, the political content of television series has been the same whether under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), under the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) or, following 30 June, during the interim period under president Adly Mansour. This year television drama is paying particular attention to the police, especially secret intelligence officers belonging to the National Security (formerly State Security) apparatus. It is well-known that events in 2011 had started essentially in response to human rights violations and torture crimes committed by the police. Until the end of 25 January, the day the revolution broke out, the demonstrators were still demanding that former Interior Minister Habib Al-Adly should be sacked — yet when they were brutally attacked in the evening the slogan shifted to “The people want to topple the regime”; and for three days until the police collapsed and completely disappeared at the end of Angry Friday (28 January), demonstrators pouring into the streets fought with the security forces. Following Mubarak's ouster on 11 February, many demanded the elimination of State Security because it was widely believed to be responsible for much torture and abuse, and in March demonstrators raided State Security headquarters — with the result that SCAF undertook a reshuffle of leaders within the Interior Ministry and renamed this department. It is important to review these events on watching Ramadan TV shows in which police officers are centre stage because it seems their principal objective is to present the officers in a positive light after their image reached a record low in 2011, gradually rising again as they stood by the people against the MB and the former president Mohammed Morsi before and after 30 June 2013. Three shows this Ramadan are virtually indistinguishable in this respect: Al-Sayyad (The Hunter), written by Amr Samir and directed by Ahmad Medhat; Ad Tanazuli (Countdown), written by Tamer Ibrahim and directed by Hussein Al-Minyawi; and Tufahat Adam (Adam's Apple), written by Mohammed Al-Hennawi and directed by Ali Edriss. They combine political drama with detective action, and they share many points of resemblance. The troubled hero in each case is a competent and talented State Security officer who has been through some kind of trauma or problem in the past, something that greatly impacted his psychological and physiological state. In Al-Sayyad, for example, it is clear that Major Saif Abdel-Rahman lost his eyesight while arresting a criminal named Al-Sayyad who used to slaughter his victims, most of whom were police officers, and whom Saif kills. National Security is now seeking Saif's counsel in the process of locating and hopefully arresting a new criminal who seems to use the same methods as Al-Sayyad. Likewise in Ad Tanazuli: Lieutenant Colonel Hamza (Tarek Lotfi) is called in while on open-ended leave to meet with Selim (Amr Youssef), a terrorist whose final request before his execution is to see Hamza. It turns out that Selim has information about an assassination that will take place on the day of his own execution, but he has decided to divulge it only to Hamza (who killed Selim's son while arresting him, Selim having killed Hamza's wife by planting explosives in her car). Tufahat Adam is no different in essence: once again the Interior Ministry seeks help from retired Major General Sherif Saraya (Zaki Abdel-Wahab), who suffered a psychological breakdown after losing his son on 28 January, following which his wife disappeared for a whole year. In detective drama, the viewer will automatically identify with the force of good represented by the police officer (as opposed to the force of evil embodied in the criminal with whom he is fighting), as per the dictates of the conventional good vs. evil setup. Invariably, however, negative aspects of the police officer will be presented to break the mould somewhat and humanise the character. Hence the constructive criticism we see in these three works. In Al-Sayyad, for example, younger officers like Captai Tarek (Ahmad Safwat) who use modern and rational techniques of investigation are contrasted with superiors like Lieutenant Colonel Maged Al-Azzazi (Ismail Sharafeddin) who employ torture and violence, and who themselves turn out to be involved in corruption and arms trade. In Ad Tanazuli the situation is reversed, with the younger officer Bahaa (Mohammed Farrag) who always thinks of using torture and violence, whether when he confronts the leader of the Jihadi group Gaber (Sayed Ragab), when he interrogates Selim's wife Ghada (Kinda Alloush) or even when he suspects Hamza might be involved in the assassination of the Deputy Interior Minister and other officers. Bahaa is not corrupt, however, neither is anyone else in the department except for one person, Major General Sabri (Sabri Abdel-Moneim), and he is the one who reveals the secret plans to Gaber and Selim. As for Tufahat Adam, corruption is confined to those who sell themselves to Morsi's presidency and the MB, one of whom, Major General Adel Yasine, commits suicide after he is exposed through the recording of a meeting with one of the MB leaders. There is no mention of torture or abuse. Inspired by American detective drama, Al-Sayyad is very tightly structured, presenting an engaging thriller where clues — some of which initially seem irrelevant — accumulate into a convincing whole. Relying on its American counterparts in visual terms as well, the show can seem far-fetched in terms of its relation to Egyptian reality, however. That we should find out about Saif's blindness while he is playing squash in the first episode, for example — he is hypersensitive to the sound of the ball — seems not so much an Egyptian as an American scene. The headquarters of National Security, with their subdued blue lights, look and feel like a state-of-the-art private company rather than a state institution. Ad Tanazuli is similarly structured, with the clues building up gradually. In both cases the solution of the crime relies as much on the hero's intuition as it does on objective fact. In Tufahat Adam, by contrast, the idea seems to be drawn from folk epics like Ali Al-Zeibaq and Adham Al-Sharqawi. It revolves around a group of fraudulent political activists and public figures — Adam (Khaled Al-Sawi), Inas (Bushra), Huwaida (Reham Abdel-Ghafour) and Gaber (Mohammed Al-Shaqanqiri) —manipulating corrupt officials and influential figures, whether in the Ministry of Interior, in the media or such figures as Dr Refaat (Mahmoud Massoud) and Sheikh Mansour (Hassan Al-Adl) in the MB. Their object is to obtain as much money as possible by blackmailing the people involved. Tufahat Adam has been subject to attack by political activists both because it features officers denigrating the revolution and because it shows activists involved in various illicit activities with the MB. To show officers denigrating the revolution is dramatically justified, but to suggest that leftist and liberal activists were driven by their interests with the MB carries a particular bias regarding the political process that followed the revolution.
