Is it Really the Right Time to Put Our Feet on the Ottoman?

Sarmad Khoosat writes exclusively for Pique on the sudden Pakistani obsession with Turkish soaps

‘…and television is furniture’. I read that in a film school brochure and wished I didn’t agree with that. The last two years were critical and fruitful for our local television. It may sound pompous and self obsessed but with plays like ‘Humsafar’ and ‘Maat’– and earlier with ‘Meri Zaat Zarra-e-Baynishaan’, ‘Daam’ and a few others– we managed to not only find new audiences, here and overseas, but also brought back a lot of viewers who complained about the degeneration of the legacy of drama that PTV had created in the 70s till the early 90s.

We also managed to create some local stars who became likable and popular enough to compel the corporate giants to not rely on Bollywood. It has been a rejuvenation and revival in many ways.

The notorious ‘housewives’- blamed for all the unintelligent and regressive content of dramas- were about to take the back seat as the late-teen audiences had begun to like and own our prime time shows. Drama production had established itself as a very viable and thriving business and it could have been a very good and opportune time to let it grow mentally, if not intellectually.

We could have explored more genres and themes, to begin with, as now we have made stars who could have helped us sell things that were out of the box. This could have been the right time to borrow trends from the Western television and go beyond the sitcoms and ‘Shaadi’ driven conflicts. Production standards could have been raised by pumping up the budgets and we could have made our own ‘Lost’ and ‘Game of thrones’ in a few years.

But we became exhausted and breathless (and eager) too soon. The ottoman was pulled closer to the sofa and we have put our feet ‘up’.

I don’t have a problem with the Turkish soaps personally. In this cyber age when Youtube, Daily motion and Torrents give us access to all sorts of international content, I don’t think it is either right or possible to control what viewers can watch.

In fact most people with internet access, watches television stuff on Youtube now.  Turkish drama is just another link on Youtube for me. It is certainly not a modern day classic or a futuristic achievement. It is like TV from anywhere in the world. It is very grand and colorful in its own way. It is ostentatious and superficial in its approach towards storytelling. I don’t think it is creative or ground breaking enough to be emulated even. It is just the kind of TV that a privileged country can produce with bigger money and a bigger drama industry. It apes the trends of American television and indulges in the melodrama of upper middle class. It is shot like B grade Hollywood (which is quite a scale to do) and does not display outstanding brains. It is ‘white’ and pretty and probably nourishes our ‘national’ complexes too well like any escapist entertainment. It is bigger and better than us in many ways but so is Iranian cinema and other European television.

We have seen dubbed and un-dubbed content on PTV even (Knight Rider, Air Wolf and All the rivers run) and we have telecast Indian soaps both legally and illegally.

So, I don’t see any threat by having Turkish stuff even in our prime time slots as I am sure that its novelty would fizzle out soon like any other fad or seasonal trend. I mean how much dubbed stuff can we ingest as an audience; it looks uncomfortable and abnormal initially and eventually too.

My only problem is with the worst possible timing for introduction of Turkish content to our viewers on our TV. It is bought at throw away prices and then thrown in the derby with our prime time shows and then brought to the altar of TRPs. We can never match the budgets that are spent on the production of these dramas but our channels (producers) are buying them for one tenth of the money that they would buy local content with.

So, just when we were hoping to make our own period epics and thrillers, and break away from the ‘Saas-Bahu’ sagas, our channels decided to sit back and make a quick buck and cut down on the budgets for their own productions.

Their myopia and lack of intellect is shunting the growth of the local industry. The TRP madness has pitted our content against the Turkish, instead of keeping it like an assorted feature. There is no sense in comparing the two with each other as there is no ‘common sense’ in that. I believe it is just a matter of time when the need to get up and move around is realized and the not-so-tired feet of the channel heads are taken off this ottoman.

 Actor, director and scriptwriter Sarmad Khoosat most recently directed the massively popular drama “Humsafar”