If years of experience has taught this writer one thing, it is to value scepticism — especially when it comes to television productions.

Despite visiting films and television shoots routinely, it has been months since I’ve written about a serial. There had been no reason to.

The last story that held promise was Green Entertainment’s Akhaarra — the underdog story of a mixed-martial artist, whose set visit during its last week of production piqued one’s interest.

That show had been an expensive production, though Icon had been told, time and again, that its budget pales in comparison to Green’s new production Duniyapur — a tale of woes set in a fictional land ruled by ignoble politics of power-mad rival clans that brazenly sell illegal arms, and happily mow down their enemies.

Green Entertainment’s upcoming Duniyapur is being tub-thumped as the highest budget Pakistani TV show ever. However, the big win for the Shahid Shafaat-directed serial is actually not the scope of the production, but its characters and how they’re written

The place, according to the story written by Radain Shah, is practically a bog, where the young bloods are sucked in by their inescapable, cursed destinies.

On face value, Duniyapur seems like a show one used to see on Pakistani Television once upon a time. While the premise is a regular indulgence in Indian movies and streaming media, as far as Pakistani television is concerned, such a production is an expensive rarity that could, potentially, change the face of television…or so Icon is told.

Since production wrapped up a while ago, the only way to substantiate the claim is to request the episodes — and in the interim, have a conversation with one of the show’s leading actors, Sami Khan.

Stuck between shoots, Sami, who plays Meer Hassan, a recently transferred SHO to Duniyapur , tells Icon that it is indeed a big production. The show’s shooting schedule began and ended with his character. It was a nine-month-long stint, from the first week of January till September. By normal standards, it is nearly twice the time of routine productions. The show, he explains, had a lot of location work.

But Duniyapur ’s big win, he adds, is not the scope of the production. It is the show’s characters, and how they’re written.

On face value, Duniyapur seems like a show one used to see on Pakistani Television once upon a time. While the premise is a regular indulgence in Indian movies and streaming media, as far as Pakistani television is concerned, such a production is an expensive rarity that could, potentially, change the face of television.

Right off the bat, Sami points out that it would be unwise to trust the trailers too much when it comes to characters; there is a greater depth to them than meets the eye, he says.

“The narrative’s flow is forged to be divergent from the norm,” he stresses. “[The show is] fast-paced and to the point, with overarching character arcs,” Sami says.

In the last few years, I’ve learned that Sami, a fine, intelligent actor who is always pushing for change — and who, at times, is visibly frustrated by the lack of it — is not one to talk in hyperbole. Just how right he is, one learns later that night, when the first two episodes arrive.

The first 20 or so seconds of the first episode threw this writer off. The footage was still in log format — ie it was flat and washed out, and had yet to be colour-graded. The aspect ratios — the length and width of the screen — jumped up and down from full to widescreen, indicating the use of different cameras. The music and the sound-effect tracks were missing, as were the visual effects shots.

With only 10 days left to go on air, one had expected the show to be complete by now.

Jumping to conclusions, however, does no one good — and frankly speaking, this writer has seen productions in their finished forms that are far, far worse.

Expecting to play the show at 2x speed a few minutes down the line, the episode was resumed. However, one’s fingers never clicked the speed button … for either episode.

Duniyapur is all that Sami said it is. It is easy looking past the lack of finishing touches, because of the pace and the unconventional reveal of the plot.

The show opens smack in the middle of a running story: two families, the Adams and the Nawabs, whose chieftains — played by Naumaan Ijaz and Manzar Sehbai, feigning civility — are already at each other’s throats.

On either side, a son and a daughter, played by Ramsha Khan and Khushhal Khan, born, raised and suffocating in this land, are looking for their own ways out. The cast also includes Hasan Niazi, Nayyer Ejaz and Mashal Khan, amongst others.

The strength of the show, even in this semi-raw form, is its editing. Few films — forget dramas — are stitched together with this precision. At times, the show feels like it is fit for a streaming platform.

One sees deliberate decisions at play from the get-go: the show does away with “hero shots” that reveal actors strutting into scenes with pompous grandeur (Naumaan Ijaz’s character is the only exception). Almost all actors, lead or otherwise, appear without fanfare; their characters, either fuming in anger and agitation, or silently contemplating their predicaments.

The cast, one realises, is playing second fiddle to the gloom that is Duniyapur itself — a fact director Shahid Shafaat confirms when we talk the next day.

Shahid tells Icon that the show had a six-month long pre-production period before the nine-months of shooting. Everything one sees in the frame is a result of meticulous, critical decisions. These decisions include the creative call to forget that an actual “Dunyapur” district exists in Punjab.

Shahid emphasises that what we see is a make-believe world that stays away from regional influences — and the costume designs, uniforms, and the neutral dialect make sure that people infer it that way.

The show is visual effects-heavy. “In the 25-hour show, there is, at least, three hours of visual effects work,” he says. That could very well be a record in Pakistan … if it isn’t already.

Seeing Shahid undertake a show that is technically challenging is a surprise.

When the director and I first met many years ago at a production house, he admitted that owing to his theatre background — he was the moving force, along with Sania Saeed, behind the theatre group Katha — he was much more adept in crafting characters and emotions. He told me that he compels his actors to “feel” the emotion, rather than “act” around it with stock expressions, but the doodad of technicalities escaped him.

That isn’t the problem today, he confirms.

“I may not be able to tell you (what keys to press in the edit), but I can guide you on what exactly should be done to make the scene more effective,” he says.

His cast, of course, are more than happy to do exactly what their director wants.

Khushhal Khan, who plays Naumaan Ijaz’s character’s son Shahmir, says that doing a lot of homework on the actor’s side compromises characters like these. Some of it, though, is necessary, he quickly adds.

“This character [a semi-pacifist in the beginning who wants to be a bike racer] needed a background, but the story does not start from that background [like conventional dramas].” As an actor, Khushhal says that the character’s uniqueness is its transition from who he is, to what he becomes.

Visibly different from where this writer saw him last — the film I saw him in was the headache-inducing Popay Ki Wedding — the thick beard and the heavy voice suit the realistic nuances he employs for Shahmir. The role was anything but easy, he says.

Now that months have passed since he finished the serial, the young actor tells me that playing less than stellar characters will be very difficult. “Performance-wise, it will be easy-peasy. One will just be “acting it out,” he says.

Shahmir shares a parallel with Ana, Ramsha’s character, but theirs is not a Romeo and Juliet story, he clarifies. In fact, as one is likely to see by the end of the first episode, their first interaction starts on a bloody note.

“There are a lot of complications. The main driving force is revenge. They operate based on that. Love is there, but so is confusion. If [one is laden with] so much baggage, how do you carry the weight of these two things at the same time?” he says.

“There is a conflict between love and responsibilities. The whole drama is about them getting sucked into the conflict,” Ramsha admits, adding that there is indeed a love story between the characters.

The actress, at first, didn’t immediately notice the parallel between her and Khushhal’s characters, she says. In fact, she didn’t even know the depth and breadth of the show until she came on set. The effort she saw first-hand from the cast and the crew had been flabbergastingly pleasant, she says.

The details, however, were not the primary reason she chose the role. Like her co-actors, it was the writing of the show, and the chance to do a lot of action, she says.

Dunyapur’s teasers pledge quite a bit of gun violence from Ana’s hands.

This is not the first time in recent history where dramas have put guns in women’s hands — with due reason, of course.

“I hope this starts a change of events, where women are playing such powerful characters, instead of crying or being saved by the hero all the time,” Ramsha says.

“The scripts where heroines are their own hero immediately attract me,” she continues. “You won’t see me doing any of the routine saas-bahu dramas. Take for example, the limited-series I am doing now. That one is completely different from Duniyapur and the character is completely different from Ana. The only thing that’s common between her and Ana is their sense of justice.”

Now that Ramsha’s done action, she says that she’s in the mood to explore other genres — if, that is, domestic television begins risking it.

“It’s about time networks understood that they are neglecting a big chunk of the audience,” says Raza Moosavee, the recently inducted Director of Programming and Strategy for Green Entertainment.

Raza, who has a 23-year history with Hum and ARY networks, says that budgets aren’t a concern for Green … yet. In a year, the network is already at fourth place; a lot of it, he says, has to do with the risk the network takes.

In a long, candid conversation, Raza says that there is no denying that there is a market for routine family dramas, but not at the compromise of good storytelling. Not all dramas can be this big in budget, one infers — especially when Duniyapur out-budgets the Humayun Saeed starrer Gentleman, the last mega-budget production from Green.

“There should be at least a project every year that strives to break the norms,” Sami had said when we spoke. “It’s not that the audience is fed up with the saas-bahu dramas, but there is a young generation that seeks something different.”

He adds: “Even a blacksmith takes time breaking a piece of iron. The blacksmith hits, and keeps on hitting the same spot, and eventually the iron breaks. That should be the end goal.”

Come September 25, one hopes to hear the clang of the first of the many hits that break the norm.

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 22nd, 2024