THE WEEK THAT WAS

Dar Khuda Se | Geo TV, Tuesdays 8.00pm

Imran Abbas, too, jumps on the bandwagon of male lead actors doing negative roles and stiffly portrays Shahwaiz, a womaniser married to an older woman (Mariam Mirza) for her money but who has a roving eye for other women, including the domestic maid. In order to keep up appearances, he tells his wife to punish the maid for breaking an expensive vase by making her work round the clock. Feigning undying love for his wife, Shahwaiz discreetly adds sleeping pills in his wife’s bedtime milk which she happily gulps down and conveniently conks out and he then visits the maid’s quarters.

At work, he harasses a middle-class girl Afreen (Sana Javed), who resigns from her job but it does little to thwart Shahwaiz’s evil intentions. He calls on her mobile phone that she doesn’t answer. Afreen’s divorced sister Tamkeen (Kiran Haq) is desperate and is developing a relationship with the sabzi wallah (Salim Mairaj), while her brother Azhar (Ali Ansari), who can hardly wait for his turn to get hitched after his sisters are married off, shocks his family by getting married in court.

What To Watch Out For (or not)

Ishq Zah-i-Naseeb | Hum TV, Fridays 8.00pm

In one track, a happy-go-lucky Gauhar (Sonya Hussain) and Kashif (Sami Khan) are in love, and often meet each other without her family knowing, but are soon spotted by Gauhar’s brother Saleem (Saad Azhar). All hell breaks loose and the family wants to marry her off as soon as possible to an unsavoury cousin, Jahangir (Khalid Malik). Elder sister Bushra (Jinan Hussain) works out a plan to get the two lovebirds’ nikaah solemnised but, fearful of huge repercussions, Gohar chickens out and gets engaged to Jahangir.

Meanwhile, in another unconnected track, is Sameer (Zahid Ahmed in a much-hyped role) who struggles with Dissociative Identity Disorder and sees himself as a man and a woman. He had issues as a child with his stepmum (Ismat Zaidi) who knows about his identity crisis. Sameer wants to marry Zoya (Azekah Daniel) to overcome his dark issues but Shakira (Yumna Zaidi) appears as Sameer’s alter-ego, telling him to murder Zoya. Despite a convoluted storyline, the promising cast is a good reason to keep watching the serial.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 14th, 2019