The attractive but lonely widow paces restlessly in her bedroom.

Presently she sneaks into her servant’s room trying not to wake her in-laws with whom she shares a huge mansion in her husband’s village.

The male servant is startled but before he can say much she closes the door, grabs his hands and moves closer.

Two episodes later, the widow in the serial, titled Dil Toh Bhatkey Ga, gives birth to an illegitimate child.

This serial and others depicting married women having such illicit relations has become a common theme in television dramas over the last couple of years.

The social and economic background of these characters, it appears, is irrelevant.

This female character has appeared in feudal/rural settings Dil Toh Bhatkey Ga (writer: Asghar Nadeem Syed) or Chabuk (telefilm, writer: Faseeh Bari Khan)) or in Karachi city Mora Piya (writer: Anjum Shehzad) and Maaney Na Yeh Dil (writer: Sameera Fazal).

And except for Chabuk, in which the woman loses her child, all the women featured in the other three plays give birth to their illegitimate children who are also accepted however unwillingly by their husbands.

Dil Toh Bhatkey Ga (2012) and Chabuk (2012) are no Desperate Housewives (the popular American dramedy in which more than one female lead character had an extra-marital affair).

The women in these plays have ‘legitimate’ reasons for their actions.

If Dil Toh Bhatkey Ga and Chabuk look at the wives’ frustration due to their husbands’ neglect, the female protagonist of Maaney Na Yeh Dil (2009) becomes pregnant because she sleeps with her fiancée who then abandons her and Mora Piya (2012) centres around a young married couple whose lives shatter when the wife gets raped and becomes pregnant.

However, the twist in the tale is that she decides to give birth to the child despite her husband’s serious reservations.

Some critics see in these serials as a much-needed exploration of mature themes, which were missing for long from the local television industry.

Abdullah Shahid, an avid drama viewer, on Pakistani Dramas Page on Facebook comments with reference to Dil Toh Bhatkey Ga: “Pakistan has many issues and these need to be raised.”

Another comment on the page reads: “These depictions are a reflection of our times.”

Thought the creators of these serials may agree with this assessment, some go further — they feel it is their responsibility to depict these issues.

Iqbal Ansari, a veteran TV producer who conceived Dil Toh Bhatkey Ga, says: “Such issues are present in our society and they need to be highlighted. In a feudal society, a girl’s needs are not taken into consideration. While her feudal husband is busy with mujras, she has no choice unless she decides to have a liaison with a lackey.”

Anjum Shahzad of Mora Piya says, “Just because a girl gets pregnant, because of reasons beyond her control, she shouldn’t be dumped. In Mora Piya, we showed a way out.”

Whatever may be the reason, the fact that such issues are being depicted on television marks a significant departure from the days when the government-owned PTV ruled the roost.

The only source of television viewing up until 2002, PTV was governed by strict rules about what could be shown in television dramas.

Agha Nasir, a former managing director of PTV, says, “Regardless of whoever was in power in the government, we had written instructions to never show an illegitimate child or an extra-marital affair on PTV and we never did.”

However, this is not to say that all the serials that depict such issues deal with them in a particularly progressive manner.

In three dramas, the intention is obviously not to highlight a reality but to pass a ‘moral’ judgment on society’s ‘decline’.

Meray Dard Ko Jo Zuban Miley, written by acclaimed actress Bushra Ansari, features an only daughter of a materialistic father.

A spoilt brat, she is impregnated by her boyfriend.

Lamha Lamha Zindagi has a minor female character, who under the pretext of studying at a girlfriend’s house, clandestinely meets up with her boyfriend; her wayward ways also land her in ‘trouble’.

The third drama, Bol Meri Machli, which won an award at the Lux Style Award in 2011, tells the story of four lower-middle class sisters, the eldest of whom has an affair with a devious poet-editor of a magazine, in exchange for getting the chance to write a television script.

In all the three dramas, which may be ‘bold’ in their depiction of single pregnant girls, the traditional view prevails eventually — the girls are shown to pay for their ‘misdeeds’.

The pregnant daughter in Meray Dard Ko Jo Zuban Miley and the expectant sister in Bol Meri Machli, both undergo unsafe abortions, resulting in their deaths.

“When we first started to show the track of the eldest sister in Bol Meri Machli, we got a strong reaction from the viewers. But they were reacting prematurely not knowing how her story would end. Hence, once her story concluded with her death, the audience understood that the girl was under severe pressure and that she was duped,” explains Ansari.

In other words, it was shown that the girl had inadvertently committed a mistake and had to pay for it by losing her life. This calmed the viewers down.

But moral judgment not withstanding, most producers and directors do realise that they are pushing the envelope.

“Viewers have access to foreign TV channels and the internet. Hence they are more aware than we realise,” says a former senior PTV producer.

According to him, the audience is now more agreeable to being exposed to these topics.

“When a boy from Mirpur first lands in London, he initially can only focus on the bare legs of women. But after a while he stops ‘seeing’ them. The viewers are no different,” says the producer.