Adil Najam
Some time back I had done a post with the title: Fifty-Fifty: The Best PTV Show Ever and included a clip from the show. The show was loosely based on Saturday Night Live and was the brainchild of Shoaib Mansoor and Anwar Maqsood, with the starring brilliance of Majid Jehangir, Ismail Tara and Zeba Shahnaz. It generated some interesting discussion and much nostalgia. Although not everone agreed it was the best show ever, there was a general sense that it had to be ‘amongst the very best.’
Today we bring you two clips from Fifty-Fifty, which may well be amongst the very best that the show ever offered, and may be amongst the best comedy skits even produced for Pakistan Television. The first of these skits may well be the iconic skit that defined the show in many memories; certainly mine. To those not familair with the Fifty-Fifty mystique or with the music of the time this may not seem all that funny, but when these were first telecast the whole country - quite literally - were talking about them. Enjoy.
Sorry, another one :D
Pakistani Sputnik
Kasoti . :D
I posted the clip in wrong post,’The nihari one’, remove it:)
The 2nd one was awesome and I had never seen it before.
Shoaib Mansoor ne jisey chuwa usey Sona banadiya.
kiya yaad dila diya!!!
Yes, Such Gup was in a class by itself. I do think that Fifty-Fifty was closer to teh humor of the ‘proletariat’ but Such Gup has iconic status and quite amazing.
I must confess that the ‘Gainda guy’ was my favorite…. any idea where he went!
My all-time favorite Such Gup moment was a short skit with no faces visible but Arshad Mahmood reciting the children’s poem ‘cheechouN cheechouN chacha’ while scribling the mouse going up the clock and all that. I have obviously not done a good job of describing the skit but for some reason it is imprinted in my memory.
After reading your comment I am so very glad that I had put that question mark in the original headline.
Maybe it’s a generation gap. Funny as 50-50 may have been, I did not think it was a patch on Such Gup (with Salima and Shoaib Hashmi, Arshad Mahmud, Navid Shehzad, Samina, Salman Shahid as The Gainda Guy, and of course, Nayyara Noor).
For those who have never seen Such Gup (certain episodes are now being released on DVD), there is one skit that defined our state of moral confusion at that time, when girl and boy students in KU were being targeted by the Jamiyat for standing less than 3 feet apart! The goons actually carried a yardstick around to check.]
Here’s the gist of the scene, from memory:
An inspector from the fisheries department is visiting the zoo to deal with a request for supply of additional fish. He is upset because only a few months ago he’d sent loads of them, but is informed that most have died. The aquarium-keeper then takes him to see the two ponds: one for male fish; one for female fish! The inspector screams and asks why this stupid separation was made, only to be told: Sir Jee, ham nay aquarium khola hae, fahhaashi ka adda to naheeñ khola hae!
For days, afterwards, the phrase ‘fahaashi ka adda’ was used by everyone to laughingly describe the most innocent of situations. But it was really side-splitting to hear, on a trip to India (where buses, unlike in Pakistan, do not have a separate women’s section) a Dillivaala friend telling me: is jagah taxi to naheeñ milay gee, fahhaashi kay adday par safar karna ho ga!
Dear Haathi, You made me laugh out loud at the way you described Ismail Tara’s stunt of ‘cheeni chupaata hai’. It must be very fuuny to watch it in actual. I’ve seen many many episodes of 50-50 but this one had so far escaped me attention. I’ll look for it now.
Another funny one was where Ismail Tara is dresseed as a cowboy and enters a saloon with the theme music from Shane playing in the background. No words are spoken. Tara sits at a table and starts sipping chai but is clearly displeased with what he tastes. The music and his expression turn ominous as he walks toward the counter with the keeper visibly scared. Tara points his gun at the keeper. The keeper starts taking cash (played by blank colored pieces of paper) out from under the counter. Tara disapproves. The keeper takes out some more cash. Tara still disapproves. The keeper starts shaking with fear. Tara reaches under the counter and pulls out a pot of sugar. The music stops and Tara says “cheeny chupata hai!” I’m told this was done around the time foodstuff was beeing rationed in Pakistan.
My top three sketches would be “Basheera In Trouble”, Ismaeel Tara dancing to “one way ticket to the moon” in a lacha, and the “Mutazalzaluzzaman Tarar” sketch.