THE WEEK THAT WAS

Tum Se He Taaluq Hai | Geo TV, Mondays 8.00pm

Sadan (Syed Jibran) is the ex-husband from hell. Instead of focusing on his rapacious new wife Rama (Feryal Mehmood) and the ‘no-good’ that she is up to, and his daughter Sidra who is constantly subjected to terrible punishments by the mean step-mum, daddy Sadan is furious at his ex-wife Alina (Tooba Siddiqui) for remarrying. Imagining that this marriage was some kind of a master plan she orchestrated, he calls her, yells at her and threatens to drag her to court and take away their second daughter, Nimra, who lives with Alina as per their previous agreement.

Meanwhile Rama, thinking that Sadan is devoting all his energies in trying to get back with Alina, connives with her devious cousin not only to rob Sadan clean of his property and wealth, but also to royally dump him.

Tajdeed-i-Wafa | Hum TV, Sundays 8.00pm

What began as light-hearted squabbling between Neha (Naveen Waqar) and Asher (Haroon Shahid), a yuppie married couple with two children, has somehow transformed into a bitter marriage heading towards divorce, initiated by Neha. More than her husband Asher, Neha feels trapped in the marriage. However, Samira Fazal, the writer couldn’t really portray any serious issues between the couple, which leaves the viewers wondering what went amiss that is driving Neha nuts and because of which she wants a divorce.

Relationships are also rocky between the newly-engaged Hareem (Ainy Jaffery) and Asher’s younger brother Arsal (Ahmed Ali Akbar) and the two senior couples — one being Hareem’s parents, the dominating disciplinarian school principal Madam Sheba Jamal (Laila Zuberi ) and her docile husband (Humayun Gul), and the other being Arsal’s parents played by Tahira Imam and Abid Ali, where Arsal’s mother is compromising and Abid Ali the dominating one. The idealistic Arsal is slowly learning that marriage is a rocky road and not the smooth highway that he takes it for because misunderstandings are happening between him and his fiancé right after the engagement. All along he thought that Neha and Asher’s was an exemplary marriage but he hardly knows the inside story. Despite it being a Samira Fazal plot and an exciting cast, there haven’t been any mind-blowing twists and turns in the story yet.

What To Watch Out For

Dil Moam Ka Diya | ARY, Tuesdays 8.00-10.00pm

Saira Raza’s juicy story is of a headstrong young woman Ulfat (Neelam Muneer in a milestone role) who is all set to destroy her life because of her impulsiveness and fiery temperament. Yasir Nawaz as the dumped husband Afzal performs at par with Neelam Muneer, who in a negative role has a tremendous presence in the serial. Now that Ulfat has abandoned husband and children, a subdued Afzal agrees to remarry at the insistence of his sister Salma (Erum Akhtar) as the children need a mother.

In his second marriage, Afzal is reserved and pragmatic as he suffered badly the first time round, but gradually things get better. But when Ulfat finds out about Afzal’s second marriage, she abandons her plans of obtaining custody of her children and embarks on a mission to remarry within a week with the help of a friend. Soon enough, she finds someone younger, pleasant looking and well-off but the minute he opens his paan-chewing mouth, she pushes him out of the bridal suite and realises that she has landed herself into a big mess by marrying someone as irrational as herself.

Published in Dawn, ICON, November 25th, 2018