Fifty-something episodes down and we can’t have enough of this Turkish delight. Ek Haseena Ek Deewana (EHED) is the latest Urdu1 offering that has created quite a furore among Turkish drama audiences since Ishq-i-Mamnoon (IM) in 2012.

With each episode, the grip only gets tighter as does the noose round Tahsin Korludag’s sturdy neck. Tahsin Korlu who? Kor-lu-dag [with a silent G], the unflinching ‘crimicoon’ [criminal plus tycoon] around whom the characters in the story revolve.

One thing is for sure, the Turks know how to pick a solid story — Mera Sultan, Fatima Gul (FG), Kosem Sultan and Kala Paisa Pyar and others. Unlike other TV serials which are generally watched by female audiences (mostly housewives), Turkish play audiences include younger men and women as these serials have a powerful story, hunky guys, gorgeous women and beautiful locations.

EHED is an action-packed thriller which takes the serial a notch up from IM which hovered mainly around forbidden love. “The feedback for EHED has been very positive,” says Zainab Lakhani, programming executive at Urdu1. “Pakistani audiences are loving their favourite Turkish actors as the lead couple in a story which is the perfect combination of drama, romance and comedy. Most of all, the dubbing of this serial is being appreciated a lot.”

The Turks sure know how to pick a solid story

There are several reasons for the popularity of this serial. The biggest audience- puller since the time they were putting out teasers is of course Behlul of IM played by Kvanç Tatltu [read Keevaansh], top Turkish actor and billed as Turkey’s Brad Pitt. In EHED he plays Taimur with leading Turkish actress Tuba Buyukustun (Kaala Paisa Pyar) in title roles with significant chemistry between them.

Audiences have been hooked right from the first scene in the very first episode which opens with Taimur driving through the picture-perfect Korluda, a town just outside of Istanbul with a revenge plan on his mind. Suddenly, a rider whose horse has lost control gallops out from the forest into the road. As the horse charges dangerously towards the edge of a cliff, Taimur stops the horse and saves the girl by putting his own life in danger and this is when the girl and boy meet for the first time. If this wasn’t enough cheap thrills, there are more in the following scene. Later in the episode he saves her father’s life, the man who is responsible for the murder and destruction of Taimur’s family. The only thing he had not planned was falling in love with Suha, his daughter.

With perfect casting, the plot is a roller-coaster ride around deep dark secrets in beautiful locales and good-looking people. There is greed and innuendo, love and betrayal, loyalty and sacrifice, fires and rescues, cleavage, hot pants and badly-cut kisses, weddings and dishoom dishoom fight scenes, mountain accidents, prompt viewer discretion advisory, gloss, detail, a bitchy vamp, dirty pasts, sneaky domestic staff et al.

Previously IM had become a phenomenon with Pakistani audiences and the last episode had a grand screening at a cinema. “IM has been aired four times already at the insistence of audiences and we are still getting requests for it to be aired again,” says Zainab.

Our audiences were not the only ones affected by the antics of Behlul and Bheetar in IM; our TV fraternity protested against Turkish content but in vain. Realising that they were now pitted against the dishy Behlul, our aging and balding leading men got hair transplants and personal trainers. The feverish reaction also produced A&B Entertainment’s high-gloss Bashar Momin where a lot of attention was paid to visual detail and styling in art direction but, sadly, the story was rather insipid. Sami khan played a character called Buland after Bolent in IM.

After the unprecendented success of IM, Urdu1 went on a Behlul-hunt and we promptly saw him in Koozay Goonay (KG) but for some reason the serial did not make waves.

“Behlul became an instant heartthrob among Pakistani audiences after the success of IM but he was definitely one of the reasons why we picked KG,” explains Zainab. “When we pick Turkish content, every detail is looked into such as the story, cast and the production value. KG was well received by the audiences but as the story was unconventional it did not become as popular as FG and IM.

Is the same artist who did the voiceover for Behlul in IM being used for Taimur in EHED? “Yes it is the same voiceover artist to maintain consistency,” says Zainab.

Originally called Cesur ve Güzel (CVG), EHED made news all over the world and has been translated into many languages including Albanian and Greek. Many Turkish series and films have taken inspiration from American TV and but with this one, Turkish audiences had high expectations because it is based on the American series The Bold and the Beautiful.

CVG became hugely popular and each week the show’s episodes garnered thousands of views on YouTube within 24 hours, getting top ratings. As international TV channels bought rights to the serial, it was appropriately named everywhere such as Shuja wa Jameela for Arab audiences, Smelyy i krasivyy for Russian, Brave and Beautiful for English and Shoja and Zibba for Persian-speaking audiences.

To transform CVG to EHED, Urdu1 confronted challenges in terms of editing, dubbing and translation. Particularly worth a mention is the appropriate and creative insertion of Pakistani songs where characters originally hum Turkish songs, especially the part where Taimur sings a Junaid Jamshed song. The background score and title music is beautiful and being downloaded for ringtones. In some places, the translation is not at par with the rest of the production values. We can understand cherry liquor being called cherry juice but when Taimur asks Suha to serve it for breakfast, her amusement and surprise seems redundant. The voice-over artistes are a tad uneasy with English pronunciation. When Taimur explains his mother’s disease to Suha, it should have been ‘genetic’ not ‘genetical’! And every time someone checks out a place for safety, they declare it to be ‘kill year’ and not clear. The impact dumbs down the designer-disheveled superhero Taimur. ‘Strategy’ in the board meeting scenario was as hard to hear as it was for the voice-over artist to say and ‘distubb’ can be very disturbing!

Nevertheless, will Taimur get his revenge or the hand of his elusive lady-love in marriage or both? Has Tehseen Korludag met his nemesis in Taimur? Will Suha’s life ever fall into place? And more importantly, how will EHED influence our local productions? We can’t wait to see.

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 11th, 2017