THE WEEK THAT WAS

Meray Mohsin | Geo TV, Wednesdays 8.00pm

Nadia Akhtar’s story explores the issues of parents remarrying. Mohsin (Syed Jibran) belongs to a middle-class family and has a demanding family with a mum and three sisters. Even though he loves the rich, pampered Soha (Rabab Hashim), he isn’t able to give her much time at all.

Soha’s mum has passed away and she is possessive about her doting father Raza (Tanveer Jamal). When she finds out her father is secretly married to Aaliya (Fazila Kazi), Soha leaves home to live with her friend, and the stress gives Raza a heart attack. The situation calls for Aaliya to move in with Raza, adding to Soha’s difficulties, who wants her father to get rid of her permanently. Soha needs a wake-up call to realise that parents have lives too.

Anaa | Hum TV, Sundays 8.00pm

With Izza (Naimal Khawar) and Altamash’s (Usman Mukhtar) Mills & Boon romance on the back burner, the chinless Areesh (Shahzad Sheikh) finally decides to defy the dogmatic Shergarh and Shamshernagar families and take matters into his own hands.

Foolishly, he breaks into archrival Saif’s (Alamdar Khan) house, when he could have just walked in, and demands that his ex- and Saif’s wife Daneen (Hania Aamir) be allowed to leave with him. After being thrown out of there, he walks back to his car to find Daneen has escaped, posing as a domestic maid. Areesh puts her up in an unfurnished house while he checks himself into a hotel. While the search is on for the runaway couple, demonstrating a love that is self-sacrificing and quite unbelievable, Areesh’s wife Anya (Areeba Shahood) is helping the runaway couple leave the country.

What To Watch Out For

Cheekh | ARY, Saturdays 8.00pm

The story which had us spellbound earlier got terribly derailed when the court ridiculously orders a perfectly sane Mannat (Saba Qamar) to the mental asylum with immediate effect in a police vehicle! While the villain Wajeeh’s (Bilal Abbas) lawyer Khanzada (Shabbir Jan) is shown to be extremely powerful, Mannat’s lawyer is a total wimp.

As if it weren’t enough that in her fight for justice for her bestie’s murder, Mannat loses both her baby and her mum and goes through physical and mental trauma, she also loses her husband Shayan (Emmad Irfani) in a freak murder by Wajeeh. If Wajeeh hadn’t murdered Shayan, he would have gotten off scot-free and Mannat’s efforts would have ended in vain. The message coming across is that only doom, gloom and loss will come your way if you raise your voice against injustice.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 21st, 2019