Aik Pal

Aminah Haq, Shazia Akhtar, Syed Afzal Ali, Sonia Khan, Samiuddin, Rizwana Khan, Shehryar Zaidi.
Written by: Seema Ghazal
Directed by: Faheem Burney
Produced by: Syed Afzal Ali and Samiuddin.
Released: August 1999.
26 half-hour episodes; on 4 cassettes

The story is based in Dubai and revloves around leftmenu best friends, Hira (Aminah Haq) and Imsaal (Shazia Akhtar). Hira is a sole heiress of a vast business yet is lonely and has no one to love as her parents are dead and her auntie (Rizwana Khan) is too involved in the business to give her any time. Hira dreams of marrying someone who's poor but who can give her lots of love. Momo (Imsaal) on the other hand belongs to a poor family and wants to marry someone who is filthy rich and all alone so that she can be the sole heiress of every thing and fulfill all her dreams.
In enters Aneeb (Syed Afzal Ali) as Hira's suitor, and both the girls fall in love with him and hide this fact from each other planning to spring it as a surprise. Aneeb meanwhile falls for Momo and convinces her to marry him and she too agrees as Hira pretends that she does not want to marry him.
Lack of love has turned Hira into an emotionally unstable girl, who suffers from fits and has multiple personality disorder and is under treatment of Dr. Muzahir Hussain (Shehryar Zaidi) a reputed psychiatrist. Also Hira is very possessive and cannot take no for an answer.
Finally the day come when on her birthday, Hira plans to give Momo the surprise that she is in love, but is stunned when Aneeb and Momo give her their surprise first and ask for her help to convince Momo's parents. What will Hira do now?
Also running parallel are the stories of a lawyer Talha (Samiuddin) and his wife Uzma (Sonia Khan) who is suffering from cancer and he is trying his best to save her as he loves her dearly, and Hira's aunt who is estranged from her husband and daughter Zara and is trying to win back her daughter's love. The play started off at a snail's pace and the first six or seven episodes really dragged but it picked up momentum the moment Hira is made aware of the fact that Aneeb loves Momo and what follows next is worth watching as it is full of suspense and keeps the viewers hooked. So do give it a look. -by Gina

Comments A different story but badly presented. What could have been shown in a time span of about 3-4 hours is dragged on for 10 hours. The last 6 episodes are just flashbacks upon flashbacks which help in boring the viewer. The other stories are added to lengthen the play and serve no purpose other than that. The play would have turned out great had it been presented in a small amount of time with no skyscrapers and highways of Dubai. An example of bad presentation is that the last episode is only 10 minutes of new story with 20 minutes of flashbacks. Fahim Burney brings a good story to the tele screen but fails miserably when it comes to presentation.