From one year to another, millions of Egyptian Muslims wait for Ramadan, the holy month, which is always connected to spirituality, prayers, and other religious rituals. Al mesharati (the drummer) roams the streets, beating his drums to wake people up to have their sohour, and shops cover their entrances with coloured lanterns with the aim of attracting more buyers. Every day, families gather around the dining table for iftar to watch television, which, over the past decades, has made Ramadan a main season for Egyptian drama.
Each year, more than 60 TV series are produced and broadcasted on different TV channels during Ramadan. Unlike last year, where many series focused on the suffering and struggles of people in slum areas and on thugs and violence, action and comedy genres seem to take over the drama series this Ramadan. Super stars like Amr Youssef, Ahmed El Sakka, Kareem Abdel Aziz, Asser Yassin, Amir Karara, Amr Saad, and Hany Salama decided to bet on the action genre this year.
For the first time, El Sakka presents the character of an unethical lawyer, who uses deception and fraud to gain money and to get involved with criminals and businesspeople, in his series “Al Hosan Al Aswad”. Amir Karara, in “Kalabsh”, is a police officer who loses his best friend and faces a complicated dilemma that may destroy his professional career, while Hany Salama is a hitman hired by a number of leading businesspeople but decided to change his life afterwards.
On the other side, the comedy series “Rayah El Madam” witnesses the second cooperation between Ahmed Fahmy and Akram Hosny after their first movie “Kalb Balady”, which did not gross very highly. The series talks about a man who tries to regain his wife’s love with the help of his best friend. Moreover, after the great success she has achieved with her popular series “Nelly w Sherihan” last year, Donia Samir Ghanem repeats the comedy experience in her new series “Fel La La Land”, whose trailer received a lot of criticism for being copied from the American series “Lost”, as it talks about a group of travellers who suddenly find themselves in Thailand after a horrific plane crash.
Chiko and Hesham Maged join Ahmed Mekky this year in the series “Khalsana Beshyaka”, which mixes fantasy with comedy. The series is divided into two stories, the first tackles the struggles of three young people who fall in love in one of the deprived areas, and the second takes viewers to a journey into a third world war that is destroying humanity.
After 20 years, actress Yasmin Abdel Aziz returns back to TV drama, with her comedy series “Harbana Menha”, where she presents a new character each episode, tackling a wide range of social problems in a sarcastic way. On the other hand, in her series, “Ramadan Kareem”, actress Ruby features a poor girl who leaves her family and lies to a rich man to improve her social circumstances.
Superstars Haifa Wehbe and Yosra both play the roles of servants in their drama series “Al Herbaya” and “Al Hesab Yegma’” respectively, both of which portray the oppression people from lower classes are currently encountering in Egypt. Hend Sabry, on the other hand, present a tragic story of a woman diagnosed with cancer a few days before her wedding in her new series “Halawet Al Donya”. The series reminded many people of the movie “The Fault in Our Stars”, which features a love story between a couple who face very late stages of lung and bone cancer.
Although she has been always known for presenting drama, the super star Nelly Kareem decided this year to change the stereotype people have about her. Her series “L Aala Se3r” or “For the Highest Price” blends comedy, romance, and drama in a new way. Similarly, Khaled El Nabawy and Menna Shalaby present the distinguished artistic work “Wahet Al Ghoroub”, based on a popular novel with the same name for the leading writer Bahaa Taher. The series tells the story of a police officer who moves to Siwa oasis with his foreign wife, who is interested in archeology and documents a lot of events in Egypt’s history.
This season also witnesses a competition between leading comedian Adel Emam and his son Mohammed Adel Emam, who present two series “Afarit Adly Allam” and “Laamy Al Ot”.
This variation of artistic works has always been one of the main catharsis means for Egyptians through Ramadan that help release them from life pressure and give them new stories to relate to and interact with.
