More than 40 Syrian soaps produced for this Ramadan, each costing on average more than 360,000 dollars.


DAMASCUS - Corruption in the circles of power, adultery, drugs, violence, misery.

Syrian television audiences are glued to their screens for a series of Ramadan soap operas with plotlines broaching audacious topics.

Take "Guzlan Fi Gabet al-Ziab" (Gazelles in the Forest of Wolves). Director Rasha Sharbatji's new series is about the atrocious behaviour of an official's son, against the background of a poverty-stricken community struggling to survive in dilapidated houses.

Some episodes would have reminded viewers of Mahmud al-Zohbi, Syrian prime minister from 1987 to 2000, who committed suicide in May 2000 after being accused of corruption.

The soap refers to incidents of exploitation of power that are well-known to the viewing public, including the theft of official seals by the son of a prime minister.

"The subject is certainly daring. We wondered if the censors were going to ban it," Sharbatji said.

"I certainly didn't want to target any particular individual. The plot and the characters are fictitious. It's all about the never-ending conflict between power and money," she added.

Scriptwriter Fuad Humeira said comedy was usually the vehicle for soaps about social issues but "this is the first time a social drama has focused on the problem of corruption in power".

Even so, the censors cut sequences in the soap that referred to "tailor-made laws" or scenes showing people close to those in power engaged in public gunfights -- decisions which Humeira contested.

As well as being shown on Syria's two channels, the series is being broadcast on Moroccan, Tunisian and Yemeni television. Sharbatji said that it has also been bought by Saudi Arabia's MBC and by NTV in Lebanon.

Corruption -- against which the Syrian authorities have struggled in vain for years -- is not the only focus of the country's new brand of soap operas.

Syrian directors have not shied away from crossing other previous red lines, such as portraying the love lives of women and showing liberated young females in nightclubs.

In "Assiad al-Mal" (The Money Lords) both corruption and romance play major roles, with director Yussef Rizk focusing on the previously taboo topic of women's extra-marital relations.

This series is built around a fabulously wealthy bourgeois family reminiscent of those seen in US soaps, complete with large villas, swimming pools and conflicts between fathers and sons.

It also features a group of criminals who pass themselves off as members of a religious sect, probably inspired by armed confrontations between Syrian security forces and extremist groups that have gone on for some time.

On a different tack, comedy "Ayyam al-Waldanah" (The Years of Youth) is heavy with political satire.

Dureid Lahham, a Syrian comedian well-known throughout the Arab world, stars as an intelligence officer in the comedy, which is being shown in Oman and Iraq. The writer, well-known opposition journalist Hakam al-Baba, opted a long time ago to live abroad.

More than 40 Syrian soaps have been produced for this Ramadan, each costing on average "more than 18 million Syrian pounds", or about 360,000 dollars, according to an industry insider.

Egypt is also a major producer of TV soaps, with around 50 series made this year, and seveal Gulf Arab states are creating their own.

However, some producers have chosen to delay transmission of their new work until after the holy month.

This is being done "so they can be followed more easily", Syrian director Firdaos Attassi told Arab-language newspaper Al-Hayat.

His new series on the Lebanese writer Khalil Gebran will not be broadcast until Ramadan is over.

"There are commercial reasons for programmes being transmitted during Ramadan," he said. "The viewer can only follow two or three soaps at one go, after all."