What's new in Ramadan TV this year? Hanan Sabra finds out This year movie stars like Youssra, Yehia El-Fakharani, Nur El-Sherif, Elham Shahine and for the first time ever Omar Sharif are competing over prime-time TV serials - mini soap operas yearly premiered in the holy month. Competition is rife. With various satellite channels having exclusive rights to specific serials, Qadeyat Ra'i A'am (A case of public opinion), starring Youssra and directed by the Jordanian Mohamed Azizia - the cast includes Samir Sabri, Gamal Ismail and Sami El-Adl - is shown only on Dubai television, with successive repeats on Orbit and ART. Based on the story of a rape involving a pediatric professor, a younger pediatrician and a pregnant nurse, it deals with how unjustly society treats rape victims and how even their nearest and dearest will end up making them suffer. Azizia refused to concede that any rivalry exists between Egyptian and Syrian drama - for years now such rivalry has been the talk of the public - explaining that "any production can deal with directors and actors of any nationality - professionalism is the only measure". The problem he encountered, rather than competitiveness, was the cinematic style of shooting, employing a single camera, and the cast having difficulty coping with 12 hours of shooting at a stretch - the routine he had been used to in Syria and Jordan - but "after that everything was well organised". Jamal Soliman in the role of an Upper Egyptian set an excellent precedent for Syrian actors on Egyptian TV last year and he is back this year in the role of a man from Port Said; he told the press that he finds regional accents easier to master than Cairene Arabic. Al-Malik Farouk (King Farouk), produced by MBC, is another serial not broadcast on national television. A kind of biography of Egypt's last king that presents him not only as royal head of state but as human being too, it is written by Lamis Gaber, who explained some of the detail behind its broadcast: "The series has been through an amazing number of problems since it was first written some 15 years ago. It was indirectly rejected by Egyptian Television, at that time the only production sector; and when MBC agreed to produce I started rewriting it again. It shows Farouk the human being; it gives a picture more like reality than the image generally painted of him, and for which contemporaneous writers and journalists working while he was being judged hugely contributed. How the script presents Farouk is the reason why it's taken so long to come to light, and also why it's not being repeated on Egyptian television." Gaber added that the authorities refused to grant permission to film in the royal palaces and other long since government-owned locations which might but did not negatively impact the end result; she praised the Syrian director Hatem Ali's cleverness and insists that the choice of another Syrian, Taim Al-Hassan, for the title role was an excellent casting decision, if only due to the physical resemblance between Al-Hassan and the late monarch. No other serials are subject to broadcast restrictions, and many are showing on both satellite and national TV. In Yetrabba fi Ezzo (May he be raised in prosperity, the last word being a pun on the surname of the protagonist), written by the humourist Youssef Maaty and directed by Magdi Abuemera, El-Fakharani plays a strangely childish toy-shop owner who is still dependant on his mother at the age of 60, and remains incapable of any sense of responsibility. In El-Daly, El-Sherif comes back as an originally Upper Egyptian tycoon whose wealth and influence fail him when it comes to assuming an official role - diametrically opposed to the role he played last Ramadan - that of a kind and sensible man incapacitated by poverty; for El-Daly, El-Sherif gave nine previously unknown actors the opportunity for exposure after personally coaching them for two months. In the historical, religiously oriented Al-Imam Al-Shafi'i, about the great religious scholar, singer-actor Iman El-Bahr Darwish comes back to show business after an extended absence. Director Shereen Qassem says he cast Darwish in the role for his arresting, trouble-defying smile - something the moderate imam was equally well-known for. It is arguably Hanan wa Haneen, a nostalgic serial about Egyptian expatriates in America, that has solicited the greatest excitement, however - and this thanks to its starring Omar Sharif, who has seldom if ever appeared on the TV screen and has only very occasionally contributed to Egyptian productions in the last 20 years. Written and directed by a close friend of his, Inas Bakr, the serial reflects "my real life", as Sharif told the press recently. It is the story of an easy-going Egyptian man who lived abroad for 25 years, only to find himself compelled by love of his homeland to return. Starring Sawsan Badr and Madelaine Tabar, whose unsympathetic role Youssra, Mervat Amin, Nelly and Mona Zaki all refused to play, the serial also brings the aging movie star Ahmed Ramzi to the screen - a decision Sharif insisted on despite Ramzi's health problems, which complicated shooting.
