Veteran artist Anwar Maqsood revealed in a recent interview that he has stopped watching local television dramas due to the content being displayed. The Fifty Fifty writer expressed his disappointment in Pakistani dramas saying, “There are so many plays that even I can’t watch, ratings have ruined media freedom. The more shamelessness, pointless sentences and disrespect, the higher the rating.”
“Urdu literature doesn’t really have drama. We have a few, but strictly speaking, we can’t call them drama either. There are a few by Agha Hashar, there’s Anarkali by Taj Sahab, Khwaja Sahab’s dramas, but these dramas are such that if you’re watching them, on stage or on television, you enjoy them, but they don’t have a place in the library. We also don’t have much fiction in our literature. We had four to five people who’d write stories, who are all gone,” said Anwar in the interview.
He went on to add, “New people aren’t coming in because these gadgets have taken away the love of reading and writing, people want everything from one single device. They don’t want to buy books.”
The writer added, “No one is writing comedy anymore. Not one person. This is the case all over the world. You’ll find many serious writers, but not many who deal with comedy.”
