Ramadan TV: Six things we learned from the 2026 season
Submitted by
Joseph Fahim
on
Thu, 04/09/2026 - 12:33
MEE’s TV critic waded through 81 series both during and after the holy month - what did he think?
Ashab El-Ard is an Egyptian-produced drama set in Gaza (United Studios)
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Ramadan remains the biggest TV season in the Arab World: the month with the highest viewership, most expensive advertising, and largest productions, realised and fronted by some of the most prominent talents in the industry.
This year did not lack in lavish productions and major stars, but encroaching censorship, the dominance of news cycles, and lacklustre writing have again underlined the overriding confusion and lassitude that informs a TV industry torn between the pull of capitalism and the whims of politicians. The off-season serials, especially when it comes to comedy, continue to suggest that Ramadan has been reduced to little more than a cash cow rather than the optimum platform for the best Arab TV, a distinction it held for the past half-century.
I watched dozens of series both during Ramadan and afterwards. Here are my six key takeaways.
1. This was one of the weakest Ramadan seasons in memory
In recent years, Ramadan television offerings have been uneven in both quality and social relevance. Yet a handful of standouts typically emerged from the dozens of original series and programmes broadcast and streamed across the Arab world.
But that was not the case in 2026: I would estimate barely five percent of more than 85 productions watched met even the baseline standards of artistry, narrative coherence, and thematic resonance.
Aside from this meagre crop, the TV line-up amounted to little more than a pale rehash of worn-out popular genres.
The Gulf and North Africa remain fixated on dramas that oscillate between nostalgia and depoliticised social themes.
Ahmad Al Awady stars as the titular Ali Klay in the Egyptian drama about a boxer trying to survive (Synergy)
Egypt continues to churn out testosterone-fuelled, lowbrow working-class fare, populated by dim-witted alpha males trading limp one-liners as they battle the wealthy and fend off the advances of countless women competing for their attention (see the likes of Ali Klay or Darsh or El King).
The 30-episode format is no longer viable in a digital era where social media reels have devastated attention spans.
Most 30-episode serials were hampered by over-extended scripts that ran out of steam by the halfway mark, resulting in works devoid of verve and vitality.
The 15-episode format is swiftly becoming the ideal configuration for Arab TV, but an alarming absence of purpose raises serious questions about the present and future of a medium well past its peak.
2. Egyptian series fell in line with the regime’s guidelines
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has repeatedly expressed concerns over politically incorrect content of TV drama, instructing the state-owned media conglomerates to steer away from contentious and provocative topics in favour of family-friendly programming and clear-cut moral messages.
This year, Egyptian dramas complied, delivering a slew of didactic works devoid of moral ambiguity. All transgression is punished, as in the drug saga Manaa starring Tunisian actress Hind Sabry. All corrupt businessmen (this season’s primary villain) must be reprimanded, as in the vast majority of the 40 or so series which featured such a character.
In Ab Wa Laken, Mohamed Farrag plays a father trying to navigate a family crisis (Damlag)
The dangers of divorce and the erosion of family values emerged as dominant themes across numerous works, including Kan Yama Kan (Once Upon a Time), Ab Wa Laken (A Father, But…) and Baba We Mama Giran (Mum And Dad Are Neighbours).
The oft-criticised (by the conservative commentariat) crime-ridden working-class neighbourhoods, meanwhile, have been sanitised of both their violence and lewdness.
As a result, many of the year's overly familiar dramas felt as though they had been engineered by algorithm; robotic copies fashioned to the caprices and conservative morality of Egypt's leader.
The governing regime, predictably, received little to no criticism.
Even in the scant number of more daring dramas, such as Ein Sehreya (A Magical Eye), in which protagonists take the law into their own hands, institutional reform ultimately triumphs as individual agency is folded into a larger, self-rehabilitating state structure.
Whether off-season series can escape this trap of self-censorship and the authorities’ rigid parameters remains to be seen.
But these growing creative and moral obstacles have begun to strain the authenticity of an Egyptian art form that has now not been truly free for more than a decade.
3. A buzzy series gave the Egyptian regime’s take on Gaza, to mixed result
There is little doubt that Ashab el Ard (The Landowners) was the most talked-about Arab TV drama of the year.
It followed 2024’s Maliha, a little-seen series seemingly designed to discourage Palestinians in Gaza from seeking refuge in Egypt and instead urge them to remain in their war-ravaged homeland.
Now the Egyptian state has produced another Palestine-focused drama, this time depicting the horrors of post-7 October Gaza.
Directed by Peter Mimi, the film-maker behind the three-part military propaganda trilogy El Ekhteyar (The Choice), and starring Eyad Nassar alongside Menna Shalaby, the series follows a Palestinian’s attempt to rescue his young nephew from Gaza after his parents are killed in an Israeli air strike. He is aided by an Egyptian volunteer doctor and a resolute truck driver striving to deliver supplies into Gaza in a vehicle draped in the Egyptian flag.
In Ashab El-Ard, a Palestinian tries to rescue his young orphaned nephew from Gaza (United Studios)
Ashab el Ard is not without merit: it does not shy away from portraying Palestinian suffering under relentless Israeli bombardment, depicting the agony of displacement, while avoiding the facile sentimentality that informed Maliha.
Several lyrical moments, capturing the quiet resilience of Palestinians amid devastation, rank among Mimi’s most accomplished directorial work.
But make no mistake: Ashab el Ard offers a distinctly subjective vision shaped by the Egyptian state. Its romanticised portrayal of Palestine bears little resemblance to lived reality, stripped as it is of nuance and embellished with implausible myths.
Israelis are rendered as one-dimensional antagonists, a depiction that ultimately erodes the narrative’s credibility. The fraught question of Hamas, meanwhile, is conspicuously avoided.
The truck driver functions as a symbolic embodiment of what the Egyptian state presents as steadfast solidarity with Palestinians. Unsurprisingly, there is no reference to the exorbitant fees imposed by the security apparatus on Palestinians attempting to enter Egypt from Gaza, nor to the government’s contentious intelligence and economic ties with Israel.
Ashab el Ard aspires to be a stirring, humanistic portrait of post–7 October Gaza. But while it succeeds in rekindling sympathy for the Palestinian cause, it sidesteps the more contentious, and ultimately more consequential, political questions.
4. Arab comedies are running on empty
Arab TV comedy is in crisis. Once a staple of Ramadan, the genre has struggled in recent years, gradually eclipsed by mainstream films that are brisker in pace and sharper in tone, if similarly thin in substance.
Each season, a handful of series from across the region would nonetheless break through, capturing facets of the prevailing zeitgeist.
This year, there were none. The Gulf remains tethered to old-fashioned family comedies that recycle the tired tradition-versus-modernity theme and generational disjunction that have been exhausted during the past three decades.
North Africa continues, largely in vain, to produce pale imitations of Egyptian hits, while Syria and Lebanon, both of which are in the midst of profound political upheaval, may find comedy ill-suited to reflecting their current realities.
In Fakhr El Delta, Ahmed Ramzy tries to seek his career in the competitive business world of Cairo (White Films)
And Egypt, long home to the region’s most successful comedies, seems to have forgotten how to laugh this past Ramadan. From worn-out buddy comedies (Heya Kemya? or "Is it Chemistry?") and fish-out-of-water tales (Fakhr el Delta or "Pride of the Delta") to riches-to-rags narratives (Kolohom Beyhebo Moody or "Everyone Loves Moody") and period pieces (El Noss el Tany or "The Second Noss"), the line-up showed little trace of originality, united instead by a persistent inability to sustain comic momentum.
Censorship continues to deter storytellers from engaging with satire, the driving force behind the most enduring Arabic comedies. With such edge largely blunted, this year’s offerings felt stale and carelessly written, lacking ingenuity and finesse.
Unless creators find ways to navigate restrictions or confront them with more subversive work, then this creative stagnation is likely to haunt the genre for years to come.
5. Assad-era atrocities are the new fixation for Syrian drama
The 2026 Ramadan season will likely rank among the most exceptional in the history of Syrian television.
Since 2011, state-controlled outlets had largely produced escapist fare detached from the realities of the Assad era. This year, however, numerous exiled artists returned to Syria to dramatise the darkest chapters of Baathist rule with a candour previously unseen on Syrian TV.
Foremost among these works is El Khuroog Ela Be’r (The Exit to the Well), a political thriller revolving around a former fighter who is freed from prison to convince his ex-comrade to join an alliance with the Assad government.
El Khuroog Ela Be’r is among the wave of Syrian drama that examines life during the country's Ba'athist era (Metafora)
Written by dissident writer Samer Radwan and starring outspoken Assad critic Jamal Suleiman, the series, which touches upon the horrors of the notorious Saydnaya Prison, stands as the most incendiary entry of the season, and the first major drama to confront abuses long denied.
Similar in scope but distinct in tone is Al-Kaisar… La Zaman Wala Makan (Caesar… No Place and No Time), which weaves together interconnected stories tracing the aftermath of state detention under Assad through the eyes of victims’ families.
Meanwhile, Eilet Al Malek (The Family of the King) chronicles the final days of Baathist rule from the perspective of a shadowy Damascus merchant closely tied to regime operatives.
Several other projects examining different facets of the former government are currently in development, most notably Al-Soreyoun Al-A’daa (The Syrian Enemies), an epic chronicle of the years of Hafez al-Assad that will reportedly address the 1982 Hama massacre.
This wave signals a newfound sense of creative renewal and freedom in Syrian TV, one that could usher in a new golden age for an industry that once rivalled Egypt’s dominance.
In this respect, the 2026 season bears more than a passing resemblance to Egypt’s immediate pre-revolution television boom between 2004 and 2011, whose unrestrained openness ultimately proved short-lived.
Whether Syrian creators can sustain this freedom and eventually turn their critical gaze toward rule under Ahmed al-Sharaa will likely become the central question shaping Syrian drama in the years ahead.
6. Auteur-driven series stood out in Egypt and Tunisia
This year’s Ramadan season did at least witness one rare development in Arab TV: emerging independent film-makers making their first foray into serialised storytelling.
The standout, and arguably the finest Arab series of the year so far, is Hekayet Narges (The Story of Narges), directed by Sameh Alaa, who made history in 2020 as the first Egyptian director to win the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival.
Alaa extends his austere exploration of Cairo’s working class in this deeply unsettling crime drama about an infertile woman who turns to child abduction in a desperate bid for social acceptance.
Inspired by a stranger-than-fiction case that shook Egypt during the early 1990s, Hekayet Narges adds a new dimension to his formidable body of work, trading the minimalism of his short films for a broader visual and narrative canvas, yet one that remains notably restrained compared to most Arab television dramas.
Part interrogation of distorted notions of idealised motherhood and part critique of entrenched patriarchy, it is, above all, an unflinching portrait of a godless, marginalised Cairo as a moral wasteland where the boundaries between good and evil dissolve.
Hekayet Narges is inspired by a real-life incident that shook Egypt during the early 1990s (WATCH IT)
Easily the most chilling viewing experience of 2026, Hekayet Narges underscores the importance of auteur-driven vision in a medium often diluted by competing sensibilities.
Less ambitious but equally accomplished is El Matbaa (The Printing Press), the TV debut from Tunisian director Mehdi Hmili, which follows a struggling middle-aged artist whose life unravels after his wife is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
While Hmili’s earlier work bore traces of melodrama, his transition to TV feels both natural and well-suited to the format.
El Matbaa doubles as a perceptive enquiry into the role of art in an economically strained society like Tunisia, as well as a poignant depiction of the erosion of the middle class in the turbulent post-2010 revolutionary period.
Engaging, superbly performed, and visually striking, it highlights the untapped potential of Tunisian TV as an industry that merits far greater attention and support than it currently receives.
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