THE WEEK THAT WAS

Ishqiya | ARY, Mondays 8.00pm

Hamza’s (Feroz Khan) parents Saman (Seemi Pasha) and Khalid (Khalid Anum) are shocked to hear from their daughter-in-law Rumi (Hania Aamir) that the real reason why Hamza had married her was only to take revenge from Rumi’s sister Hamna (Ramsha Khan), and that he had been blackmailing Hamna all along about Hamna and his four-year-long relationship during their university days. Writer Mohsin Ali Shah penned the most appropriate reaction from Hamza’s parents who, despite their shock and embarrassment, take Hamza to task. The lines in the last episode following this scene were all about respecting and honouring women. If Hamna was shown to be a timid woman, her sister Rumi was shown as courageous and bold. However, a distraught Rumi loses her baby and does not forgive Hamza, and even Saman tells her not to compromise on her self-respect. Another feather in director Bader Mehmood’s cap where, in the finale, his male antagonist (similar to his previous hit Cheekh) is punished by karma, and left to wallow in shame and guilt for hurting his loved ones for selfish reasons.

Jalan | ARY, Wednesdays 8.00pm

Shocking the daylights out of him, Neesha (Minal Khan), the sister-in-law from hell, proposes to her behnoi Asfand (Emmad Irfani). And why is Asfand meeting Neesha for lunch at a café sans his wife Meenu (Areeba Habib)? Fuming at the proposal her sister Meenu (Areeba Habib) found for her, Neesha gives Meenu a piece of her mind, and generally carries on being a handful all round, since things are not working her way. Neesha thinks she has laid out all her cards but sister Meenu is pregnant and has hubby Asfand doting on her, and he is presently not really thinking about a psychotic sister-in-law waiting to pounce on him, figuratively speaking.

What To Watch Out For

Bandhay Ek Dor Se | Geo TV, Thursdays 8.00pm

At last, the army of characters are beginning to make sense, and the story has picked up as well. When Maheen’s (Ushna Shah) in-laws-to-be make unrealistic demands that cannot be fulfilled, they leave and Maheen’s family quickly finds a replacement for the groom in a bewildered cousin Umar (Ahsan Khan) who loves Roshni (Hina Altaf), Maheen’s bestie. So relieved are the two dozen characters in Maheen’s family that great, big assumptions are made — that the bride and the groom are over the moon about being married to each other — but actually neither of them are. For the greedy Roshni, it’s a double whammy of bad news. After the huge let down from her family friends who she thought had chosen her for their son Nabeel (Adeel Chaudhry), she returns home to find that her best friend Maheen is married to Umar, the fellow she had wanted to dump since the day she had spotted Nabeel.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 23rd, 2020