Media Magick

Pakistani humor is known for its class, creativity and hilarious one-liners; but it doesn’t look like that after producing more dramas like Dolly Darling the humor will be known for its class. Recently I watched 3 episodes of Nadia Khan and Aijaz Aslam starrer Dolly Darling which is written by Muhammad Younis Butt and produced by Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi for GEO TV. The sitcom is quite awful at least for those who are exposed to classier and quality oriented Pakistani sitcoms. The sitcom offers no story or a sensible plot; it just keeps its focus on irrelevant comparisons and unnecessary laughter which at times look fatiguing and fails to bring even smiles.

Nadia Khan’s Horrendous Performance As Dolly Darling:

Dolly Darling revolves around Dolly (Nadia Khan) a housewife who is shown stupid, idiotic and she belongs to posh class, she is married to Mustaqeem (Aijazz Aslam), a director by profession. Every episode looks like a terrible effort to make audience laugh on every line but it falls flat on its face. Performance wise Dolly Darling offers nothing, it’s horrendous act by Nadia Khan who tries too hard to make her audience laugh but because of two reasons she fails drastically,

1. Nadia Khan keeps acting like Bushra Ansari and Hina Dilpazir, where she offers nothing dependable or entertaining,

2. Younis Butt’s writing is next level poor; it doesn’t look like Dr. Muhammad Younis Butt could write a script which even a rookie can write with better punch-lines.

Uroosa Siddiqui is another pain to watch too plastic and tries too hard to be funny by going loud for no good reason.

Pitiful Writing In The Name Of Comic Act:

Dolly Darling reminds of Saba Hameed’s and Waseem Abbas’s sitcom Family Front, which aired back in 1997 and was also written by Muhammad Younis Butt; it looks like the graph of his writing has tremendously dropped from than. For me it was difficult to believe that Younis Butt wrote the script of Dolly Darling because I have watched his plays in the past and they were quite hilarious, and come no way close to what Dolly Darling offer. There are even traits of dialogues from few YouTuber’s content, not sure who inspired from whom or who copied whom. But the content is stale, and not fresh.

Showing Women Next Level Idiotic

The biggest low of Dolly Darling is that it shows women as headless, aimless, insecure and stupid besides showing them all from upper class, writer mainly uses their idiotic trait to create jokes and funny elements which are not witty or even humorous. This ideology of showing women foolish and silly to a different notch is quite degrading.

A Brief History of Women-Centric Comic Plays

There was a time when Pakistani playwrights used female characters as comic relief and they never went to a level where females would have felt awful about themselves. Making fun of a gender is different and making others laugh because of a gender’s acts and responses is a totally different thing, which Younis Butt needs to understand. Athar Shah Khan (Jedy), Haseena Moin, Anwar Maqsood, Umar Sharif and many other writers have produced shows, sitcoms and dramas which didn’t only show women as comic relief but they also showed them with grace and substance. Dramas like Shahzori, Nadaan Nadia, Tanhaiyaan and Munnu Bhai’s Sona Chandi are just a few names to learn how to write about women by making them look both witty as well as a properly crafted character.

What Are We Producing In The Name Of Entertainment?

After looking at sitcoms like Dolly Darling it feels bad, the comedy has become so lame these days; what kind of content is rolling out on television? From the content to the acting, from the direction to the set design it all looks so fake and unrealistic. Just for the sake of adding funny lines (which aren’t even funny) writers try too hard to write punches in every other dialogue and that’s definitely how comedy writing is done or remembered. I wonder why people, especially women, aren’t raising their voices for showing them as mediocre props with no-brain and something of this sort is acceptable to showcase on a TV channel. It’s about time people should demand makers to produce quality stuff and not run of the mill content that has no entertainment value.