THE WEEK THAT WAS

Bewafa | ARY, Mondays 8.00pm

If Ahaan’s (Ali Rehman) son Hashir (Abdul Muqeet) had not started to irritate Shireen (Ushna Shah), whom she had previously pretended to mollycoddle, and if Shireen’s sister Sharmeen (Maira Khan) had not told Kinza (Naveen Waqar) that Shireen’s sweet and innocent nature was completely fake, the inane message of the story coming across so far was to become best friends with your husband’s new wife, and co-exist happily as one big family. But now with Shireen’s mean and manipulative personality exposed to Kinza, the dynamics between first wife Kinza, second wife Shireen and husband Ahaan will change, and bring us some juicy episodes to watch.

What To Watch Out For (Or Not)

Alif | Geo TV, Saturdays 8.00pm

It is easy to drift away from Umera Ahmad’s mish-mash of sufism in a story spun around three generations of characters who have spiritual awakenings, and who find their connections with the Creator at different points in time. The only thing not connecting here is the audience looking for a substantial, gripping story.

Instead of moving forward with the characters, we are stuck in a time warp with Qalb-i-Momin’s (Hamza Ali Abbasi) grandfather Abdul Alla’s (Manzar Sehbai) philosophic rants in the backdrop of visually appealing shots of Turkey. They occupy more time than one character doing calligraphy and a swirling dervish who turns out to be Ahsan Khan playing Qalb-i-Momin’s father Taha, who falls madly in love with Husn-i-Jehan (Kubra Khan), a Pakistani actress in Turkey! Abdul Alla apprises Momin of how his parents fell in love and how Abdul Alla made their lives miserable. Keep watching if you like slow, artsy stuff that you keep hoping will soon make sense.

Published in Dawn, ICON, December 22nd, 2019