THE WEEK THAT WAS

Raaz-i-Ulfat | Geo TV, Tuesdays 8.00pm

The conservative, middle-class Cinderella Mushk’s (Yumna Zaidi) best friend Sehba (Komal Aziz) spills the beans to Mushk’s dad Iftikhar (Tanveer Jamal) that Mushk is out celebrating her birthday with Irtiza (Shehzad Sheikh). A furious Iftikhar creates a big scene, throwing chairs around and slapping the younger daughter Amber (Arisha Razi) for not giving him the information earlier. Mushk arrives home from a blissful beach birthday to find her father fuming. Marriage is on the cards for Mushk, but more interesting is how Sehba, after dumping her ex-boyfriend Nomi (Danial Afzal Khan), has now suddenly set her heart on marrying family friend’s son Irtiza not out of love, but out of jealousy and spite for Mushk. Didn’t we say this was going to be another bestie-going-for-your-man story?

Mohabbat Tujhe Alvida | Hum TV, Wednesdays 8.00pm

There must be a terrible dearth of story writers that we are now going to be inspired by Bollywood plots. When some scenes in the first couple of episodes turned out to be xerox copies of the 1997 Bollywood hit Judaai, it was difficult to ignore the post-teaser uproar about MTA being a rip-off of the Sridevi starrer. Point is, it qualifies for the latest trend of stories around the oh-so-greedy-material girl. This time, it is the bubbly Ulfat (Sonya Hussain) who dreams of a fancy lifestyle and will later compromise her husband for some wealth. Her husband Shahaan (Zahid Ahmed) has a smug new boss Shafaq (Mansha Pasha), who is a hard taskmaster but, at the same time, is getting way too interested in her employee Shahaan’s goof-ups. But then Shahaan saves her dad’s (Javed Sheikh) life by getting him to hospital just in time during a heart attack. Shafaq, who had earlier fired Shahaan, now gives him a promotion. The characters are whimsical, the plot borrowed and the situations not really plausible, not to mention the over-the-top acting by Sonya Hussain.

What To Watch Out For

Jhooti | ARY, Saturdays 8.00pm

If it is not her lies that get her into a right mess, it is her stupidity. Nimra (Iqra Aziz) most stupidly mistrusts her brothers and just can’t see through her con-artist husband Ali (Yasir Hussain) lying through his teeth. When her brothers Ahmed (Paras Masroor) and Majid (Qasim Khan) tell her that her house papers are fake, she agrees that Ali is taking her for a ride, but only until Ali takes her along for verification of the papers from a lawyer paid off to lie for him. She returns home to fight with her brothers that they are doing this to her deliberately so that she divorces Ali. She threatens to drag them to court if they don’t give her her share of the inheritance. Nimra has already lost all her money to Ali, and is now about to lose her family because of her evil husband and her inability to see Ali for what he really is.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 12th, 2020