In 30 Days, which unfolds over such a time period, Tarek (Asser Yassin) is a well-known psychiatrist. He has a wife, Taghrid (Ingy Al-Mokadem), and a daughter named Farida. One day a young man who calls himself Tawfik (Basel Khayat) arrives at Tarek's clinic and declares that he has chosen him for a psychological experiment all his own. An eccentric jazz musician and anti-psychiatry activist, Tawfik says he wants to prove that putting someone under pressure will destroy them within a month. And so the horror show beings. On the first day Tawfik kidnaps Tarek's daughter. On the second he sends Tarek and Taghrid a sex video of Tarek with his secret second wife Safi (Naglaa Badr), a famous actress, copies of which he also sends to everyone in Tarek's life. The video soon appears on the internet, destroying both Tarek and Safi's reputations; Taghrid asks for a divorce. In the meantime Tawfik, now known as Sameh, is seen playing at a classy nightclub for free where he seems to know the owner; for these two reasons and because he is always dressed in black, he is considered a weird character. In the incidents that follow everything that Tarek wants hidden is revealed — all the skeletons in the cupboard including an addiction problem, a decision to sell his father's land without his siblings' consent, the corruption of his business partners — so much so he suspects Tawfik managed to locate his lost diary. Satan's Hope In 30 Days the pace is satisfying with action on the screen most of the time, but the screenplay by Mustafa Gamal Hashem and Ahmed Shawki has a number of weak points: on many occasions developments are not dramatically justified; often they don't turn out to be dramatically necessary either. Safi going to Taghrid to ask her to persuade Tarek not to divorce her, Safi, for example, is hardly believable; it is devised so as to make Safi faint at Tarek's doorstep and end up spending the night there, but as it turns out there is no reason for her to be there. With the exception of Khayat — who overacts and overdoes the jazz, revealing the influence of Rob Marshall on director Hossam Ali — the acting in 30 Days is sound, though it is still not clear what Tawfik's dangerous game is really about. *** In Satan's Hope — asham iblis (fil gannah) is a common expression for misplaced hope or undeserved expectation — Amr Youssef plays Marwan Salem, a famous plastic surgeon with high profile connections a business empire and endless wealth. Directed by Islam Khairy and written by Tamer Ibrahim, the series opens with Marwan — seemingly with the aid of some kind of hidden camera — uncovering a conspiracy being hatched by his mother (Dalal Abdel-Aziz), his wife Dina (Reem Mustafa), his best friend Mahmoud (Khaled Kamal) and his brother-in-law Medhat (Ali Al-Tayeb), the nature of which is yet to be revealed. And so Marwan storms out, having divorced his wife and asked her and his mother to leave the house, only to end up in a car accident that leaves him amnesiac. He doesn't realise how his family feel about him until he finds his diary, which they try to steal... While Marwan is taken care of by the owner of a circus (Ahmed Bedier) and his kindly daughter Rana (Dina Al-Sherbini), a performer — themselves in conflict with Rana's uncle, who wants them to remove the circus so that he can sell the piece of land it occupies — further complications begin to surface. It turns out that Marwan was involved in, among other things, altering the appearance of an arms dealer... The events are gripping, but there is too much detail outside the main storyline for the viewer to focus, giving the impression that it could've been more powerful. *** 30 Days Screenwriter Tamer Habib director Mohamed Shakir Khodier and producer Mohamed Mashish's small screen version of the late Ihsan Abdel-Quddous's family drama La tutfi' al-shams, or Do Not Make the Sun Set — which director Salah Abu Seif made into a famous movie in 1961 with Faten Hamama, Shukri Sarhan, Laila Taher and Ahmed Ramzi — is definitely one of this year's highlights. Humorous and involved, with deep believable characters and meaningful storylines, it capitalises on the success of Grand Hotel, the trio's second collaboration last year, and brings together many of the same actors. Habib held a workshop in which Ingy Al-Qassem, Samaa Abdel-Khalek, Rana Abul-Reish and Fadi Murad all provided input on how to update the story, bringing it into the present. Changing the names of the characters to make them all start with alef, Habib drew on another Hussein Kamal's 1972 film Empire M, another Abdel-Quddous family drama in which the novelist revealed his understanding of women's emotions, conflicts and challenges. Iqbal (Mervat Amin) is a recently widowed mother who is close to every one of her children, keeping the family together for meals and making sure everyone is alright, is also busy with the return of the love of her life, a flower shop owner who gets back in touch now that her husband is dead and offers her the job of running one of his projects. Ahmad (Ahmad “Tyson” Mamdouh), Iqbal's eldest, is unhappy with his job at his uncle's factory, but when he finally confesses his love to the girl he has always desired, he realises that she loves him back and finds his salvation: she encourages him to seek out his dream of becoming a writer. Mamdouh emerged as a great actor last year, and his performance lives up to expectations even though many viewers have commented that he does not enunciate clearly. Afnan or Fifi, the academic who seems to have no emotional bond with her family, criticising her brothers and sisters as well as her mother and feeling left out of their conversations, is brilliantly and courageously performed by Riham Abdel-Ghaffour. The two other sisters, by contrast, are mild and feminine characters. Ingy (Amina Khalil) is in love with a young man from a lower social and financial class who is too sensitive about his status for their relationship to survive; when their relationship ends she begins to fall in love with Youssef (Ahmed Magdi), a more compatible family connection who has always admired her. And Aya (Gamila Awad), only 16, is in love with her 40-year-old married professor, Hisham Sharaf, a distant friend of her family's, remarkably performed by Fathi Abdel-Wahab; their complicated relationship is discovered and exposed by Afnan. As for the younger brother Adam (Ahmed Malek), the most attractive character in the series — engineering student, Uber driver, DJ, stand-up comedian — he has an older woman friend, Rasha (Sherine Reda), and loves a working-class girl named Habiba (Mai Al-Gheiti).
