CAIRO - Different local TV stations have almost pulled the plug on their political talk shows during the Muslim month of Ramadan when viewing rates usually reach the climax in Egypt. Instead, many star-studded serials, produced especially for the month of Ramadan, provide an overdose of the nation's dramatic politics. Since the lunar month began on July 10, TV viewers have been bombarded with a large number of soap operas with politics and political Islamism being at their centre. The Muslim Brotherhood and their Islamist allies are grilled in the dramas over their controversial mixture of politics and religion. Celebrated actor Hany Salama plays the title role in the "Preacher", a serial criticising Islamists' manipulation of religious sentiment for political and financial gains. The highly rated serial traces how Youssef, a famed TV preacher played by Salama, shifts from his militancy into a moderate Islamist falling for a revolutionary musician. Barbs are also fired at extremist, corrupt clerics in "A Temporary Name", a series in which veteran actor Sabry Abdul Moneim plays a hardline Islamist stopping at nothing to run for president. In "The Guava Theory", starring the anti-Islamist actress Ilham Chahin, the now-toppled president Mohamed Morsi's bizarre rhetoric is recalled. In one scene, a patient tells the psychiatrist, played by Chahin, that he is haunted by shadows of fingers. Morsi was notorious for his repeated talk about "strange" fingers meddling in Egypt's affairs. He even took his "finger conspiracy theory" to an Arab summit held in Qatar earlier this year, raising eyebrows of most leaders and audience. Egypt's divergent political and soci-economic fortunes under Gamal Abdel Nasser and his successor Anwar el-Sadat are dramatised in the interesting serial "A Girl Called Zat" starring the ballerina-turned-actress Nelly Karim. Liberal and Islamist leaders are, meanwhile, mimicked in "The Other Face", a comic show hosted every midnight by versatile comedian Mahmoud Ezzab. His personae range from prominent reformist Mohamed ElBaradei, the Brotherhood ideologist Essam el-Erian to firebrand Salafist Hazem Abu Ismail. Paradoxically, all these shows were made earlier this year when the Brotherhood was in power. Their producers say their boldness and vocal criticism would have made a stronger impact had the Brotherhood been still at the helm.
