A review on Pakistani TV Drama Serial, Pyarey Afzal (2013), [Dear Afzal]. The Production House is Six Sigma Entertainment while its Distributor is ARY Digital.
+ Crew
I. Directed by Nadeem Baig
II. Written by Khalil-Ur-Rehman Qamar
+ Note
Pyarey Afzal aired on ARY from 26th Nov 2013 – 12th Aug 2014. It consists of total 37 episodes. The Opening theme “Pyar Ko Pyar Mila” Sung by Waqar Ali. The show was a major critical and commercial success and the last episode was aired in various cinema screens within the country and became first one to do so.
This drama serial was also highly trended on social networking sites and became a “cult” in Pakistan.
+ Main Cast
- Hamza Ali Abbasi as Afzal Subanullah
- Aiza Khan as Farah Ibrahim
- Sana Javed as Lubna Ibrahim
- Sohai Ali Abro as Yasmeen
- Firdous Jamal as Maulvi Subanullah
- Saba Hameed as Ruqayya Subanullah
- Anoushey Abbasi as Arfa Subanullah
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+ Supportive Cast
- Saba Faisal as Irsa Ibrahim
- Shehryar Zaidi as Sheikh Ibrahim
- Farah Nadeem as Yasmeen’s mother
- Vasay Chaudhry as Dr. Sibtain
- Umer Naru as Mehtab
- Malik Raza as Wali
- Ali Sheikh as Babu Hameed
+ Plot
It surrounds Afzal, son of Maulvi Subanullah. Afzal does not take his life seriously but loves to play cricket and gamble on it. When his father threats to leave home forever, Afzal swears to work hard and live honest life instead. Meanwhile it is a mystery to all, if Farah the elder daughter of Sheikh Ibrahim is not the same ‘Farah’ who has send love letters to Afzal all those years then who did?
+ High Points
i – Hamza Ali Abbasi is truly a charismatic, remarkable performer. He played the lead role ‘Afzal’ the misguided but kind heart son of Maulvi Subanullah very splendidly.
ii – Firdous Jamal as Maulvi Subanullah played his role admirably and still remains a wonderful actor for the viewers.
iii – Sohai Ali Abro as Yasmeen played a strong, brave woman role. It was exciting to watch her performance and was a very important character of this drama series. Honorable Mentions are: Aiza Khan and Sana Javed.
iv – Even though this drama series reached till 25th episode, even then I was watching it very keenly. Not once did I felt that they were dragging the story. This is the first time ever since I started watching Pakistani TV drama series.
v – I am very happy how the complete story was written. It is really tough mechanism to do is to present a simple story in most attention-grabbing manner.
+ Low Points
i – When Afzal imagines that Farah have paid a personal visit to him at hospital, she is wearing exact same dress in his imagination as she is wearing it the same day (in reality). BTW why do we so many imaginations in almost every drama series for? All the time playing with viewers’ expectations…
ii – When Farah openly refuses to get engaged to Afzal, further degrades him in front of both parents — her parents do not say anything to her or scold her instead just quietly accepts whatever she is saying to Afzal.
iii – When Mehtab again makes his appearance in this series, he requests Lubna (disguise as Farah) to reconsider his wedding proposal. Afterwards, we don’t hear from him again although we as viewers know well that he was (and still is) head over heels in love with Farah and cannot take ‘No’ for an answer.
iv – All was going well till we came across the episode where Afzal needs to take blood revenge from Wali. At that moment I realized, how this great drama series would come to its miserable end. Rather than keeping the story down to earth, as simple as possible; they just could not help it and forced a crime, murder element into it.
v – In the finale, we see that Afzal drops Yasmeen at her home in a grey car but when he returns his home town (same night), his car is different and in white color. Yes, from grey it is now white car. The question is how it is possible that this fame drama series would do such a Blunder?
Well, the most logical explanation is that perhaps that the BTS team after shooting the grey car shot with Hamza & Sohai, they must have realized that the blood would look better and visible on a white car instead. Without giving a logical reason to the viewers, we have a white car and said ‘No one would actually notice it on such an emotional scene’.
+ Overall
It’s hard not to admire its simplicity rom-drama, but Pyarey Afzal is also too clumsily manipulative to rise above its melodramatic clichés.
Rate: 3.25 out of 5 stars
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