Why are Pakistani serials shown on Zee's Zindagi channel increasing in popularity when we have at least 100 serials currently showing on entertainment channels? - Quora
Vivek Gupta, optimist,sensitive and believer
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Saima Siddiqui,
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Here are ten reasons why Pakistani serials shown on Zee's Zindagi channel increasing in popularity compare to Indian counterpart
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- Good Things Come In Small Packages : The best part about these Pakistani serials is that they have a definite end.These Pakistani shows have water-tight scripts and they don’t believe in stretching them beyond tolerance.The fact that shows like ‘Zindagi Gulzar Hai’ are being re-telecast on popular demand goes on to show that the crisper the plot is, the more memorable it is.
- There’s A Whole World In Between Black And White : The characters aren’t good or bad, they’re just real. They’re not one dimensional; they have layers to their personalities, just like you and me. Characters like the arrogantly self-dependent Kashaf, the thoughtful Zaroon (Zindagi Gulzar Hai), the insecure Maham Bakhtiyar (Mere Qatil Mere Dildar), the innocent and gullible simpleton Pagli Baaji (Kash Main Teri Beti Na Hoti) and the patriarch Shah Ji are so well written, they are bound to stay with you for a long time.How often do you find such well written characters in the Indian television?
- Overacting Never Helps : Start watching these Pakistani shows and you’d realize how no woman turns around thrice saying ‘kya! Kya! Kya!’ or drops a ‘thaali’ or beats her chest while crying. They don’t howl or shriek. Thunderous slaps don’t happen. Women don’t roll their eyes and twitch their lips. They look and behave like normal human beings and not characters out of a cartoon series. Fawad Khan leads by example here. His performances are so nuanced; he has become a rage in India in just a few weeks. Not only are these Pakistani actors good looking, they act brilliantly well too.
- Substance Over Cheap Thrills : The plot lines are strong enough to hold the audience’s attention. They aren’t enticed into believing in ridiculous concepts like reincarnation and black magic. Characters don’t get plastic surgeries done. Neither do the dead return on the day their spouses are finally getting re-married., not do their spirits haunt the families. And sadly, that’s all Indian television is about. Pakistani serials do not take their audiences to be fools.
- Tasteful Music : Enough of those loud background scores! The title tracks in these Pakistani shows are well composed and beautifully sung. The TV shows aren’t unnecessarily sensationalized like in the Indian television. Bizarre sounds and background scores don’t begin each time a character appears on screen. Most of these Pakistani serials don’t even have a background score in fact, unless the scene really demands it. And yet, the soulful title track remains with you long after you’ve seen the show.
- Stereotyping Is Never Cool : Even though most stories on Zindagi revolve around Muslim characters, they are never made into typical Muslim caricatures that most of our shows seem to propagate. Their characters don’t go around saying ‘Mashallah’ or ‘Subhanallah’ as you may expect them to, going by what has been shown on the Indian screen so far. And there’s no ‘sher-o-shayari’ or ‘qawwali’ either. Surprised? Thanks to Indian TV series like ‘Beintehaan’ and ‘Qubool Hai’, we have all wrong notions about the world. The words these Pakistani characters speak are believably graceful and yet not stereotypical.
- Realism Over Extravagance : Zindagi is all about the many aspects of life and the complexities within. The sets don’t look like segments out of a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. The poor look poor and the middle class don’t live in palaces, unlike our TV shows, where everything is distastefully larger than life and unbelievably extravagant. The make-up doesn’t make women look like bizarre creatures and the men are spared the horror of being pancaked till they start looking like women. The characters look as real as they can.
- Women Liberation In The Correct Sense Of The Term : While the Indian television puts forward one regressive notion of the ‘sanskari’ Indian woman after the other, these Pakistani TV series get the concept of women liberation spot on. They don’t propagate the idea of a woman’s world revolving around her man. There’s more to women than dressing up, gossiping, cooking, waiting for their husbands, participating in talk-a-thons with their mother-in-laws and shedding tears. The shows neither idealize the rebel-with-no-cause just to be cool nor do they look down upon the conformist characters in them. Issues like work place exploitation, incest, domestic violence, rape and prostitution are dealt with boldly yet sensitively. The society they show is much more progressive than ours, in more ways than one. The women in these shows definitely set an example for us.
- Religion Is Not The Centre Of Everybody’s Life : Idol worship has been such an inevitable part of our Indian TV shows that we almost forgot that it was possible for serials to begin and end without a family pooja or a religious procession after every three episodes. The shows on Zindagi look beyond religion and tackle issues we all deal with in our daily lives. A character’s goodness or evilness doesn’t depend on whether he prays or not. In fact, religion isn’t even a part of most of these serials. Wouldn’t it be great to see an Indian TV show that doesn’t talk about ‘bhagwan’ or to be more precise, Hinduism for once
- Maturity Is What Separates Real Depictions From Cliches : Even a show like ‘Aunn Zara’ that is primarily a love story, depicts the complexities of relationships the way they should be. Not just romantic relationships, these shows are equally adept at dealing with all equations between their character.
