BAGHDAD: When their electricity isn’t zapped by daily power cuts, Iraqis can pretend they live in a normal country with a normal cultural life by tuning into the Iraqi version of ‘Pop Idol’.

Despite collapsing public services and the constant threat of death, more than 2,000 young Iraqis signed up for the talent show when al-Sumeria TV announced the venture earlier this year.

Many Iraqis already obsessively watch ‘American Idol’, a version of the original British ‘Pop Idol’ franchise, and a glitzy Lebanese copy called ‘Arab Superstar’ on free-to-air Arabic satellite channels.

But ‘Iraq Star’ is a brave indigenous effort to perk up the spirits of a depressed nation. The studio set is spartan and drab, and there is no studio audience, though viewers are being promised tinseltown touches when the finale is held in Beirut.

“We are trying to lighten the load and problems Iraqis are going through,” said director Wadia Nader during recording of an episode this weekend in a Baghdad hotel.

“We had shows like this in the 1960s when people were discovered on television. But since then, with so many wars, Iraqis couldn’t see this kind of thing,” he added.

Drawing on a rich native heritage, the show takes Iraqis back to the era before Saddam Hussein and the successive traumas of war, domestic repression and international sanctions.

Most contestants choose well-known melancholy numbers about unrequited love, sung in an old classical style.

“You just want the wounded lover to run after you; I know you and your nature,” croons one young man called Hossam. He looks non-plussed as one of the three judges tells him he has pronounced some Arabic letters in far too nasal a fashion.

Another singer is upbraided for making a grammatical mistake in a metaphorical tale about a dead bird.

“You didn’t prepare the song well. ‘Slaughtered bird’ is masculine, but you kept saying it in the feminine!” the judge gripes like a grammar teacher.—Reuters