THE WEEK THAT WAS

Meraas | ARY, Thursday 9.00pm

The serial promises an intriguing storyline with compelling characters played by a cast that includes Savera Nadeem, Mohsin Abbas Haider and Saboor Aly.

Meticulously done, detailed-to-perfection sets and the interesting get-up of actors, especially of Noor-ul-Hasan as the cunning munshi called Five Percent and Asma Abbas [not an evil woman for a change], sets a powerful haveli ambience. Savera Nadeem plays Jehan Ara Begum, the over-the-top tyrannical woman who bosses her father, stepmother and stepbrother.

Mohsin, the male lead plays the street-smart Haaris, who is hell bent on going abroad to marry a gori but his mother marries him off to plain (and poor) Jane Saboor Ali. He remarries and brings home the older, wealthy Jehan Ara Begum who finances his trip abroad on certain terms and conditions, and decides to get rid of the first wife while he flies off.

Qurban | ARY, Monday 8.00pm

Nikah-on-nikah is the theme of Zafar Mairaj’s plot around which two episodes are aired [in one go] every week.

The heart-broken loverboy Jamal (Bilal Akbar) wakes up after an accident, searching for his wife Heer (Iqra Aziz) who has disappeared. Heer married to Jamal on the sly and allowed her parents to marry her off again to Shahmeer (Shehzad Sheikh) without spilling the beans. Shahmeer, in turn, actually is in love with someone else but discovers a considerate friend in his wife and tells her all about his real love interest. Following so far?

Iqra Aziz looks stunning, and that’s about it. Bilal Akbar looks battered and over-emotional (red eyes, yelling and fainting constantly) and Shehzad Sheikh just looks drained and confused. Omair Rana as the antagonist Qaiser, Heer’s authoritarian brother-in-law, however, is noteworthy. Watch it if you can stand the tearful madness.

What to watch out for

Parchayee | Hum TV, Friday 9.10pm

Minal Khan — the #MeinPerfectHoon girl — has worked her way up to star status in a Moomal Entertainment production as Pari, whose mother (Sabina Hisbani) is a widow who refuses to remarry. Hisbani has some excellent work to her credit, including her recent roles in Mohabbat Tumse Nafrat Hai and Gumraah.

Things get complicated when the mother-daughter relationship suffers after the mother actually remarries. Written by Uzma Iftikhar and directed by Asad Jabbal, the cast also includes Asif Raza Mir.

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 14th, 2018