Image: HUM TV.
Sanam Saeed and Emmad Irfani are back together on screen in HUM TV’s Gulbahar. This time the couple’s closeness is tested by a question their family will not leave alone: when will they have a child?
Saeed plays Sara opposite Irfani’s Sheheryar. As pressure builds around their inability to have children, Diya, Sara’s younger relative, enters a family already under strain. It is a premise that could easily turn Sara into a problem for other characters to solve. The stronger drama lies in whether she gets a say in the choices being made around her.
The series reunites Saeed and Irfani after Kafeel, but Gulbahar gives their relationship a different starting point: affection is already there. It is the expectations placed on that marriage that create the conflict. A recent Dawn review describes the pressure on Sara and questions the familiar second-marriage trope, without treating the later course of the story as settled.
HUM TV lists Aliya Bukhari as writer, Mehreen Jabbar as director and Momina Duraid Productions as producer. Its current schedule gives Gulbahar the Wednesday and Thursday 8 p.m. slot. The series has already begun airing, with its opening episode covered on September 17.
That leaves the most interesting question open. Will Gulbahar let Sara be more than the target of everyone else’s plans, or will the pressure around parenthood swallow the marriage the show has taken care to establish?
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