THE WEEK THAT WAS

Aangan | Hum TV, Thursdays 8.00pm

Tehmina (Hira Mani) cries her heart out but her father Mazhar sends off cousin Safdar (Ahsan Khan) to Aligarh to graduate with promises that, on his return, Safdar’s wedding to Tehmina will materialise despite Tehmina’s mum (Madiha Rizvi)’s intense disapproval of Safdar. Another time lapse happens in the middle of the episode and two years have passed by and Safdar has disappeared. Tehmina’s mum discusses with Mazhar that, with Tehmina being of a marriageable age, a suitable proposal should be sought for her. This ends in yet another quarrel between the two. Blithering continues between Chammi (Sajjal Ali) and Rameez (Ahad Reza Mir) but the serial still hasn’t been able to justify the hype around it.

Babban Khala Ki Betiyan | ARY, Thursdays 9.00pm

While younger sister Baby is enjoying her honeymoon of sorts in Murree with husband Qasim (Sarfaraz Ashraf) and mother-in-law (Ghazala Butt), poor Dolly (Sana Fakhar) has to endure a father-in-law from hell. When Dolly’s mother-in-law passed away right after the Rukhsati, he delivered a crazy speech on how unlucky Dolly was for the family.

Being a spoilsport-cum-party-pooper-cum-senile, he wants freshly-cooked chapattis just before she is going to dinner with her husband (Hassan Ahmed), screams at her for not cleaning the house properly and even wants to throw her out for sleeping late! It’s all good since the serial is a light comedy, but God help us if domestic saga writers get inspired to add mean father-in-laws to add to the brutalities shown by mean mother-in-laws in most teleplays.

What To Watch Out For

Deedan | A-Plus, Saturdays 8.00pm

The whole village in the northern areas is astounded by what seems to be Resham (Sanam Saeed) vanishing into thin air, just a day before she was set to be stoned to death for eloping with Zardab (Mohib Mirza). As the villagers were collecting stones to attack Resham, in the dark of the night, Resham’s husband and former father-in-law Gulbaaz Khan (Ajab Gul) rapes her. While he is asleep, Resham escapes and grabs the opportunity to run off to where she used to meet Zardab, because her friend Pulwusha (Minsa Malik) had told her that he was still alive and would wait for her there every day.

Once again, they elope and this time manage to reach Karachi. They contact Palwasha who helps find them a place to stay but not without her husband getting suspicious. The writer Attiya Dawood and director Amin Iqbal have together built up suspense, and not one episode has dragged so far throughout this beautiful yet heart-wrenching love story set in the mountains.

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 17th, 2019