Hani Mustafa assesses the appeal of Al-Andalib, the Ramadan serial based on the life of Abdel-Halim Hafez Ramadan is open season for the producers of TV serials who compete with one another across terrestrial and satellite channels to win the largest share of the inflated audience. But what can be presented amid all the competition in the Holy Month that will attract the attention of the viewers? The search for a winning formula -- the producer's holy grail -- has been a long- running affair, and for some time now they have opted for serials dealing with Egypt's contemporary history, especially the period around the 1952 Revolution, that is, the '40s, '50s and '60s. Layali Al-Helmiya, written by Osama Anwar Okasha and directed by Ismail Abdel-Hafez, is the model they strive to emulate. It first appeared at the end of the '80s and ran for five, albeit non-consecutive, seasons. The serial detailed the experiences of characters that sought to represent all classes between the '40s and the end of the '70s, a strategy that allowed the serial's makers to cast light on the developments of society as a whole. It not only kept viewers glued to the TV screens but spawned a host of imitators, including such socio-political historical dramas as Hawanem Garden City, Bawabet El-Halawani and Zizinia. The attempts to tie up personal experiences with recent social history soon extended to biographical dramas based on the lives of celebrated artists, as was the case in the 2001 serial Umm Kulthoum, produced and written by Mahfouz Abdel-Rahman and directed by Inam Mohamed Ali. Like Layali Al-Helmiya, Umm Kulthoum used a personal drama to foreground social and political developments and in doing so attracted a large number of viewers. This year it is the turn of Al-Andalib (The Nightingale), written by Medhat El-Adl and directed by Gamal Abdel-Hamid, to try and reproduce the formula. The serial generated a great deal of pre-release publicity with the televised competition to discover the best Abdel-Halim Hafez impersonator to play the lead role. Contestants from all over the Arab world put themselves forward, though it was an Egyptian, Shadi Shamel, who won. While the serial began with the birth of Abdel-Halim Shabana in the village of Al-Halawat in Sharqia governorate, it was never intended to focus exclusively on the singer's life. Several storylines in the serial are devoted to aspects of Egyptian society. The first episodes examine the life of Abdel-Halim and his siblings, orphaned immediately after his birth. His sister Alia and oldest brother Ismail become surrogate parents as the children, including a fourth brother Mohamed, are moved from one house to another before coming to live together as a family in Cairo, at which point events take two diverging routes. The first strand is a more or less regular family drama with Alia as the mother figure in a household that also includes the siblings' cousins Fardous and Shehata. Alia's maternal feelings towards Abdel-Halim are established in the earliest episodes while oldest brother Ismail (Kamal Abu Raya) will soon become a father figure and mentor of Abdel-Halim's singing career, a role that is facilitated by his already being accredited to the Egyptian Radio organisation. We see Abdel-Halim's love of "progressive" music of the kind embodied at the time by performers such as Abdel-Wahab. In one scene the relationship with his brother and his love of music are mixed when we watch them sing an old song together after which Abdel-Halim takes the oud from his brother to provide him with an example of the kind of music he prefers. The director makes ample use of Shamel's talents as a singer and composer, allowing him to perform on camera rather than use the play backs that accompany Abu Raya's singing. The serial moves on to explore the details of Abdel-Halim's singing career, including his personal and professional relationships with the composers Mohamed El-Mougi and Kamal El-Tawil, the staff of the national radio station, not least Hafez Abdel-Wahab, the man who not only acted as his first champion but also provided him with the stage name he would use throughout his career, and the radio show host Galal Mouawad. Political developments are presented in what is tantamount to a parallel script, with the nationalist movement depicted as running alongside, though not interacting with, Hafez's developing career. Nor were historical, let alone artistic, mistakes avoided. When Sheikh Mohamed El-Bahtimi (Ahmed Salama) first appears he is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Imam of the village mosque. His appearance among a demonstration against the British occupation seems naïve and forced. The demonstration is attacked and among those arrested is a secondary school student, Gamal Abdel-Nasser Hussien (Magdi Kamel). The serial picks up Nasser's life as one dramatic thread, paralleling it with that of Hafez. As Nasser enters the military academy, Hafez is accepted in primary school in what is supposed to be 1946. While the young Hafez teaches at a school in Tanta, Nasser is teaching at the Military Academy. It is in this episode that Mohamed Shabana tells the family about having watched as demonstrators died on the Abbas Bridge, repeating a pervasive myth. In fact no demonstrators died during this particular incident. The episode goes on to detail Nasser's relationships with his colleagues who will later become the Free Officers until we reach the 1948 war, replete with the issue of corrupt weapons and the continuous insinuation about the corruption of Egypt's political parties. The Free Officers begin to organise and the government is eventually made aware of their presence through the political leaflets they distribute. The Muslim Brotherhood is presented through their internal debate about the use of violence inside Egypt. The serial attempts to present the leader of the brotherhood, Hassan El-Banna (Amr Abdel-Galil) as a moderate, claiming he rejected violence on the grounds that it would undermine two decades of his organisation's efforts. The scriptwriter is again mistaken when he claims that the 1948 war ended with the return of besieged soldiers, including Nasser, from Falouga, which is followed by a member of the Brotherhood assassinating Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmy El-Nokrashi, and then the assassination of Hassan El Banna. The government in fact decided to ban the Brotherhood on 2 December 1948; El-Nokarashi was assassinated on 28 December 1948 while the 1948 war ended with Egypt's announcement that it was ready to negotiate a cease fire on 7 January 1949. El-Banna, meanwhile, was assassinated on 13 February 1949 as he was leaving the Brotherhood's headquarters. The episodes shift between the serial's different themes. In one episode we watch the Free Officers being formed while Hafez records his first song, Ya Helw ya Asmar (Beautiful Dark One), composed by El-Mougi. Initially the radio's programming committee rejects him, a decision overturned by a second committee, comprising Umm Kulthoum, El-Kassabgi and Abdel-Wahab, after which the singer changes his name to Abdel-Halim Hafez. It is a structure that follows the pattern set by other Egyptian TV serials that take on historical themes. Fortunately, Abla Kamal has perfected the role of the traditional mother while Abu Raya continues to build on the promise first displayed when he took on the role of the celebrated poet Ahmed Rami. As for Shadi Shamel, who plays Abdel-Halim Hafez, it was wisely decided that he base his portrayal of the singer not on Hafez's film persona -- with the best will in the world he was never more than a mediocre actor -- but on the character that emerges in Hafez's recorded interviews. It is a strategy that works, allowing Shamel to emerge as a far more convincing Hafez than Haitham Ahmed Zaki did in the movie Halim. While the episodes already screened are only a small portion of the serial, it seems to have pressed the right buttons with the audience, and could well emerge as one of this year's Ramadan successes.
