The cast of Beit el-Shedda (House of Distress) decided to present something new to Egyptian and Arab viewers, away from the social stories of most Ramadan TV dramas this year.
The serial belongs to the social, horror and suspense type.
It starts with a woman and her son and daughter who return to their old house after years of absence. They look like strangers to everybody present.
One of the residents of the same district then tells their story to friends sitting with him at the café.
According to him, the water of the Nile River dried up over a thousand years ago and people could not find food to eat or water to drink.
The old owner of Beit el-Shedda then asks his servants to bring him anybody who passes by the house.
The servants keep bringing their master people to eat, but this makes the house infamous for death and killing.
This is why the residents of the same district decide to rise up against the house owner, attack the house and burn it down.
The man telling this story is called Mukhtar, a character enacted by actor Ahmed Wafeek.
The woman arriving in the house together with her daughter and son is none but a granddaughter of the old owner of the house.
She is coming back to avenge her grandfather.
Beit el-Shedda is a serial about magic and sorcery, but in a realistic way.
The serial’s scriptwriter, Nagy Abdullah, says is he is obsessed with original ideas.
”I am keen to stay away from translated or a copied work,” Abdallah said.
Nonetheless, the serial is inspired by a fictional story, but one that has a real social background from the ancient Egyptian history.
Its events take place in an era that had never been tackled by any previous work of drama, namely the era of the al-Shadda al-Mustansiriya which covers the period between 1065 and 1071 in Egypt.
”The serial presents a series of virtual events based on a mix of fantasy and reality,” Abdallah told the Egyptian Mail.
Abdallah has a long record of work at cinema and TV supervisory agencies.
He had seen a large number of TV and cinema works that do nothing but present Egyptians in a bad way.
”So, I wanted to introduce a new work that presents the Egyptian street in its true form, with its positives and negatives,” he said.
Beit el-Shedda seeks to deliver a wide range of messages through its events.
It sheds light on the ethics regulating dealings between people in Egypt’s districts, hoping to contribute to reviving these ethics.
The serial glorifies values, such as love, compassion and non-discrimination.
It also lays stress on family bonds and the need to bridge gaps between generations, ones that cause problems within the same families.
The serial also dwells on the serious effects the Internet can have on youngsters in the absence of the necessary awareness and protection from elders.
It raises questions about who should protect society in case of aggression.
The events of the serial present an appropriate answer to such questions.
Surprisingly enough, Abdallah first introduced the idea of the serial in a play form in 2020.
He then started to remodel it into a TV serial form.
He said the selection of horror and suspense was a challenging matter for him.
He wanted to use this horror and suspense to make his work appealing to the young generation of viewers.
One of the people Abdallah wanted to appeal to with his work was his son, 16 who reads novels and watches movies, but stays away from works with social content.
”I just wanted to juxtapose horror and suspense with social values,” Abdallah said. “This is the only way, I believe, I can make this young generation of viewers pay attention to these social values.”
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