After thirty episodes Bashar Momin’s transformative moment finally came and he became Rudaba’s “prince”, though like a lot of people I think the prince looked a lot better with the beard.

Bashar is in hiding while the police and government officers investigate his shady dealings as a money launderer. One clumsy scene after another of screaming policemen interrogating screaming members of the Momin family and then along comes our girl Tayaba. Tayaba denounces her brother in a public TV interview and Bashar watches in tears as the sister he was willing to destroy so many lives for denounces him in public. Then he sees Rudaba, who not only defends him but even manage reassure him saying he must do what is right for him and not worry about her or the family.

“ aurat do kisam ki Mohabbat karti hai aik hoti hai aurton wali Mohabbat khudgarz, leyyn deyn wali…… aur aik Mohabbat hoti hai jo Maa kay pyar ki tarha hoti hai selfless … bura hai bhalla hai mera hai”

This is perhaps the dialogue that most easily explains Rudaba’s feelings for Bashar. She has accepted him completely into her heart, for better or worse and whether he deserves it or not.This , unconditional love is a rare painfully bought gift which finally heals Bashar’s damaged psyche.

“Abb Mujhe koi nahi Hara sakta”

The fabulous script by Zanjabeel Shah has always been Bashar Momin’s strong point, well plotted, well-defined characters and some truly great dialogues it has kept this serial’s head above water even when the director was playing around with special effects. Episode 30 in particular was hard to sit through and her ladies and gentleman is the heart of the matter, why? After enduring some bad episodes, some good episodes this should have been drama at it’s most gripping, when the story moves to resolution. Instead the audience was forced to squint through the darkness in one badly lit scene after another.  Why do A&B productions have such a near pathological fear of light? Then to add insult to injury Rudaba visits Bashar in Jail , what could have been a magnificent scene and a rare moment in which Ushna Shah is actually concentrating hard enough to make her character work, is ruined by someone playing the ost so loud we can barely hear the actors speak.

Episode 31 looks as if it was 2 episodes pasted together but it was worth the wait. Faysal Qureshi is without doubt an amazing actor; his screen presence is so powerful that despite the Ushna’s inexperience he managed to carry most of the powerful scenes. Bashar knows exactly what he has done, he trembles every time he sees a glass of juice, weeps when he takes Tayaba and Bulund’s baby in his arms and the audience weeps with him.  Bashar’s Transformation is so complete that he does something totally amazing for most Pakistani dramas … he actually apologizes to his wife, tries to fix his mistakes, he even says sorry to Bulund.  Just loved, loved Faysal Qureshi in these scenes I just wish Faysal had kept some control on Bashar’s character and not been so loud in the beginning. Quiet power and a more controlled performance would have just as effective.

The men of Bashar Momin have mostly managed to make their characters believable. Yasirr Mazhar as Adil was a treat to watch: weak brother or walk over husband, he kept it real. I just loved it when he told Sairah off in the last episode. Sami Khan was the real surprise and stole the show completely in some of the episodes .Bulund is a character often seen on our screens, jealous, possessive and vindictive but ostensibly a “Sharif Admi” but after realizing his mistake he became a lot more likable. I wasn’t too sure about his transformation into accepting husband and there is a nasty part of me that wanted Tayaba to suffer.

The women of Bashar Momin were the weakest links. Maheen Rizvi deserves a prize for the worst acting I have seen in a long, long time. Sundas Tariq, the annoying Tayaba, was the only one who gave a consistently decent performance every episode and resisted any urge to overact. Ushna Shah was both the weakest link and paradoxically the strongest. To her credit she has great screen presence, exceptional good looks and manages to create a lot of on screen chemistry with her costars. However she really needs to work on her craft, hone her dialogue delivery skills and work on her expressions. Rudaba did not win Bashar easily, it was a very bittersweet victory yet that did not come across in a lot of the scenes.  The cascading curls certainly didn’t help either, It didn’t matter if the world was about to end, Rudaba never failed to have perfectly coiffed prom curls.

This serial had a very strong story and I was fully expecting it to be a block buster but I think the director was busy reading fifty shades of grey or something … if only he had concentrated on getting strong performances out of his cast and given the actual script some credit. I have to say I watched his Kash main teri beti na hoti and that was a fantastic, addictive soap which is actually playing on Zee Zindagi. However the same chiaroscuro style lighting and gothic atmosphere really didn’t fit in with Bashar Momin, which was a very emotional tale of transformation and redemption. Sometimes simpler is better and less really is more.

Talking of less is more, If Nabilas were the stylists for this drama, I think Faysal should ask for his money back. None of the clothes the actresses wore made any impact and the Men’s styling was just a distraction from their characters. For all their sharp business suites we never saw Bashar or Adil do a stroke of work. I think Bulund had the best look out of the entire cast and Sami Khan wore it really well.

Overall despite   some very good episodes and good performances by some of the actors, Bashar Momin did not realise the potential of its script. There were amazing scenes and dialogues but the execution was inconsistent at best. A lot of people tell me television is a writer’s medium but we see scripts ruined every other day by bad execution. At the same time no director can save an awful script. The best projects are always the ones where director and writer understand each other and try to stay on the same page.

  Sadaf Haider