Tash Ma Tash Series
Tash Ma Tash, a Saudi comedy series, was broadcast during the Ramadan season. It first aired in 1993, and continued for consecutive seasons until 2011. It reached nineteen seasons and hundreds of episodes. The series addresses social, cultural, and political topics in a satirical style, through characters close to society who represent the general public. The leading roles were performed by the duo Nasser Al-Qasabi and Abdullah Al-Sadhan, with the participation of a number of local and Gulf actors, and most seasons were directed by Abdulkhaliq Al-Ghanem.
About the Tash Ma Tash series
The name of the series Tash Ma Tash was taken from an old traditional game that bears the same name. Its episodes were written and presented in a standalone manner, as each episode had a different writer and story and new characters, which helped diversify the topics and ideas, while coming together to deliver social messages in a comedic sense. The series began under the direction of Amer Al-Humoud in the first two seasons, then director Abdulkhaliq Al-Ghanem up to season fifteen, then Hisham Sharbatji in season sixteen, and Mohammed Ayesh in seasons seventeen–eighteen, while season nineteen, the last, was sponsored by the General Entertainment Authority and was named "Tash: The Return", directed by Mohammed Al-Qaffas.
Characters of Tash Ma Tash
Some characters and stories that gained great public popularity were repeated in Tash Ma Tash for several seasons, and some characters became a social archetype and an icon inside and outside the series. Among them is the story of the families of Abu Hazzar and Abu Nizar, two brothers who go through amusing situations with their families. The situations are often during desert trips ("kashtah"), or during the gathering of the two families at home. The actor Fahad Al-Hayyan became famous in it for a childlike comedic character named "Hazzar".
The characters Hamoud and Muhaimeed also appeared; they are two friends from a simple rural environment, and life forces them to face the different city life, which contrasts with what they knew in their simple community, as the series addresses cultural and social differences between the countryside and the city. Also the characters "Alyan and Saidan", two young men living in an old, simple village, who face daily life situations in a satirical manner.
Among the characters is "Abu Musaad", played by Abdullah Al-Sadhan. It represents a type of social character in real life, characterized by greed, miserliness, trickery, and his keenness to save money by any means, even at the expense of those around him, relatives and neighbors. Abdullah Al-Sadhan also played the character "Abu Zunaifer", a model of the simple, traditional man who clings to his customs and values that conflict with societal changes, but always puts his interest above everything, and refuses to respond to progress and development in an impulsive way, creating amusing situations as he interacts with city life and its rules.
The character "Fuad" became an icon inside and outside the series, performed by Nasser Al-Qasabi. He is a humorous character in his innocence, dominated by naivety and a lack of understanding of things as they should be, which makes Fuad vulnerable to constant exploitation and falling into embarrassing situations. He always appears in an absurd, inconsistent look that indicates his excessive innocence. Fuad is often accompanied by his uncle "Asaad Omar Qalli", played by Yusuf Al-Jarrah, who is smarter and more savvy than him, and always tries to save him from the problems he gets into.