“Aik Sitam Aur” replaces “Yeh Na Thi Hamari Qismat” in the Monday to Thursday slot on ARY Digital. Starring Usama Khan and Anmol Baloch as the leads, this show also has many talented names like Sajid Hasan, Rubina Ashraf, Maria Wasti, Shahood Alvi, Adnan Jaffar, Javeria Abbasi, Srha Asghar and Salman Saeed in the cast. The story has been written by Rehana Aftab and directed by Ilyas Kashmiri. The story of “Aik Sitam Aur” is described as focusing on the life of Ushna and the troubles she and her mother, Zainab, go through at the hands of Zainab’s family.
In the first episode, we meet Shehroze (Usama Khan), a young man running a successful business. Shehroze dotes on his mother, Naeema (Rubina Ashraf), who is paralyzed, and blames his father, Wahab (Sajid Hasan), for her condition. It’s not clear exactly why he blames his father, considering neither he nor his father were home when she fell ill….so why wouldn’t he blame himself as well? Still, he is a young man angry at the world, angry with everyone except his mother. It’s clear that Naeema is very worried for her son and his well-being. It’s also nice to see Sajid Hasan back onscreen after a long break!
Meanwhile, we meet Ushna (Anmol Baloch), a young girl with two loving parents, played by Adnan Jaffar and Maria Wasti. Zainab (Maria Wasti) comes from a well-off family, but they do not pay her family much attention. Zainab’s brothers Rafaqat and Shujaat have manipulative wives, along with spoiled, ungrateful children, including Sadaf (Srha Asghar), who visibly dislikes Ushna. While this is a tight-knit, loving, sweet family, towards the end of the episode, we see Ushna’s father having a heart-attack while driving. This is evidently the start of Ushna and Zainab’s misery, as they will be left to rely on Zainab’s family – a family that is too self-absorbed and scheming to genuinely care for these two women.
This is as much as we can determine from episode one, but what makes this show slightly unusual is the direction in which it is headed. What we can presume about how the show will play out is that Zainab will wind up married to Wahab as his second wife. This essentially means that Shehroze and Ushna will be stepbrother and stepsister…..before starting a romance? This is a slightly awkward concept for a show, but it might be interesting to see how it plays out. As a first episode, “Aik Sitam Aur” isn’t necessarily off to a great start. It’s interesting enough, but there is a generous dose of melodrama and the “negative” characters are entirely too negative, to the point that their future behaviors are entirely predictable. Still, this show may have promise depending on how it is handled in upcoming episodes – and again, it’s great to see faces like Sajid Hasan and Maria Wasti in prominent roles again.