THE WEEK THAT WAS

Ab Dekh Khuda Kya Karta Hai | Geo TV, Tuesdays 8.00pm

Finally the saga of two brothers — Shan-i-Alam aka Shani (Humayun Ashraf) and Jan-i-Alam aka Jan (Danish Taimoor) — falling in love with one girl, the relentlessly struggling Mariam (Sanam Chaudhry), came to an end. Mariam dealt with tragedies all her life, most of which were inflicted by Jan. Fate makes Mariam run into Shani who owns a school in Murree where she teaches. Shani, clueless about Mariam’s past with Jan, promptly falls in love with her. When Shani brings his mum (Sajida Syed) to meet Maryam, both women go into flashbacks about the evildoings of the elder brother, Jan.

Instead of putting Jan and Mariam’s past behind and sorting things out, the mum implores Mariam this time to disappear from Shani’s life. On the way back home, the mum dies in a car accident, leaving Mariam with a promise to decline the proposal. Mariam meets elder bro Jan and summons a full-fledged apology with the man down on his knees. When Jan discovers that Shani loves the same Mariam, he sorts things out with Mariam, gets the two married and ... shoots himself in the head. Pretty boy Taimoor needs to improve his repertoire by doing some solid roles instead of melodramatic, sudsy ones.

Haiwan | ARY, Wednesdays 8.00-10.00pm

Amna (Iffat Rahim) comes clean to her family that earlier she had lied about husband Hameed’s (Faysal Qureshi) confession of having raped and murdered Masooma (Areesha Ahsan). All hell breaks loose as the family is devastated. Hameed surrenders himself to the police while son Maan (Wahaaj Ali) makes amends in his marriage by sending his little girl Rania back to his wife Momina (Sanam Chaudhry), who he had thrown out of the house mercilessly, having accused her of blaming his father for something he had not done.

Momina, being Masooma’s, sister decides to return to her husband but declares that nothing would be the same as before. Hameed loses his senses; the court declares him insane. After coming back home, he one day wanders out of the house. In the last scene, Masooma’s mum Azra (Savera Nadeem) finds him begging for mercy at the steps of a shrine that she visits. Director Mazhar Moin did full justice to the sensitive story by Sara Sadain Syed and the finale of the serial nailed some riveting performances by Faysal Qureshi, Iffat Rahim and young Wahaaj Ali.

WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR

Ranjha Ranjha Kardi | Hum TV, Sundays 8.00pm

Now that shopkeeper Sahir has broken her heart to smithereens, the only option rag-picker Noori (Iqra Aziz) has is to agree to marry the evil Shauka (Noor-ul-Hasan). Shauka had bailed Noori out of jail where she’d landed after stealing jewellery from Qudsia Bibi (Ayesha Khan) to help Sahir get out of jail. Shauka blackmails Noori’s parents into marrying their daughter off to him, or else she goes back to jail. In the dark of night, Noori runs away to Amma Jannatay (Zaib Rehman in yet another powerful role after her comeback after some 20 years) who agrees to sort her life out, but only on the promise that Noori would stick to Amma Jannatay’s plan. That plan involves marrying her to the mentally-challenged Bhola (Imran Ashraf), with whose family Noori would live a respectable life.

After some coercion, Bhola’s mum (Asma Abbas) agrees and the knot is tied. Ten episodes down this Kashif Nisar directorial has us glued to the telly for its pacey, realistic and gripping story with powerful performances by Imran Ashraf (who gained weight especially to play Bhola) and Iqra Aziz.

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 13th, 2019