Every Saturday night, the hashtag Alif – a nod to Hamza Ali Abbasi and Sajal Aly’s drama – begins to trend on Twitter, intriguing everyone. But that probably has more to do with Hamza Ali Abbasi’s star power on Twitter because if you look at the views and compare them to the views of rival drama, Meray Paas Tum Ho, you get a completely different picture.
While Alif in its essence is thought-provoking, layered and intense, the pace of the drama is killing interest and ultimately making it tiresome to watch.
Read More: Meray Pass Tum Ho EP 13: Predictable or more to it?
The sixth episode shows Momin get rid of his ladylove Neha, played by Sadaf Kanwal after she continuously pushes him to cast her ‘friend’ in his next film. The breakup isn’t very pleasant and the two vow to get their revenge from each other. While I do commend Sadaf for doing an above-average job as far as her acting is concerned, her performance doesn’t match that of Hamza, who is giving this character all of him. Sadaf’s dialogue delivery is monotonous and sounds as if uss nay ratta maara hai – it is completely devoid of emotion.
Other than that, we are given another flashback to Momin’s childhood, when someone mentions Husn-e-Jahaan. To be very frank, I’m sick of watching these flashbacks because all Kubra does in them is cry, while the child Momin is borderline annoying.
On the other hand, Momina (Sajal Aly) is struggling with the death of her brother Jahangir. The entire family is broken after his death and the emotions shown by the actors are brilliantly raw and invoke sympathy in you.
While the rest of the episode was slow, it picked up in the last ten minutes with the interactions between Momin and Neha and Momina and her master (Saifee Hassan).
Oh and one thing: a message for the producers/director – that cut jump in one of the scenes was abrupt and highlighted lazy production. Not cool guys, we expect better.
Read More: ‘Alif’ is slow-paced but intense
The teaser for the next episode is catchy with the return of a previous character and Momin heading to Turkey to visit his grandfather.
Everyone on Twitter keeps praising Alif for its “great acting, storyline and powerful dialogues.” I do agree with the great acting and [somewhat] powerful dialogues bit, but I’m still waiting for a proper storyline to develop and become more engaging. Six episodes should be more than enough to get the ball rolling. No?
