Prince Diana walks alone in the early eighties in central London before catching the attention of journalists, who chase her with questions for permission. The frightened, terrified princess runs to escape them and enters an apartment building at full speed, closing the door behind her. She found only one apartment in the building open, so she entered it cautiously, only to find that it was the apartment of expatriate Arab students of different nationalities.
Students experience a mixed sense of amazement and admiration at the same time after they find out who entered the house without an appointment. Students sit around the princess, introducing her to themselves and offering to help her safely get out of the eyes of journalists who gathered outside for Egyptian director Mohamed Bakir's 2023 series "London Batch."
The series is produced by the Shahid platform by Kuwaiti writer Heba Mashari, and depicts the lives of Arab students living in London to study medicine of various Arab nationalities and erupting between them various conflicts and differences due to class and political differences as well as because of historical deposits. It caused an uproar after its launch last month over accusations of portraying Iraqis in an inappropriate light, and the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information intervened on the controversy, declaring that it had nothing to do with Kuwait.
Apart from this controversy, which brought the news of the series to the forefront for several weeks, the series is a type of television series that appears at intervals and deals with the life of Arabs in the British capital, London, whose story, plot and filming locations focus on the life of Arabs there, and it differs from those that deal with stories from the Arab world grafted with some scenes filmed in the British capital.
More than 100 years ago, Arabic poetry benefited from the migration of poets of the East to North America, and the phenomenon of diaspora poets was established, headed by Gibran Khalil Gibran, Mikhail Naima and Amin Rihani, and they established famous links such as the Pen League.
The series "London Batch" kept pace with the phenomenon of increasing the number of Arab students in the capital, London, especially after many Gulf students benefited from government scholarship programs during the past ten years, although the time of the series dates back to the early eighties. It may have been to choose a time in the past 4 decades ago to avoid any sensitivities related to the enormous political and social changes that the Arab world and London witnessed during this decade.
The series began with the above-mentioned scene, which is a surreal comedy scene in terms of plot and in terms of filming in the hook technique used by directors and authors, to dazzle the viewer from the beginning in order to attract him to follow the series. Although it is steeped in imagination, it expresses the state of intense Arab passion from the ocean to the Gulf for the British royal family, especially for the late Princess Diana, an admiration that began since her appearance in public life in the early eighties and did not end with her death, which is now more than a quarter of a century old. The sentences of dialogue between the princess and the Arab students in their apartment expressed the same admiration that Arabs of different nationalities still say about Princess Diana.
Arab Diaspora Drama
This series is one of the series expressing the drama of Arabs in the diaspora, specifically the city of London, which has become what looks like an unofficial capital for Arabs in Europe for students, politicians, tourists, journalists, doctors and other Arabs. They are series that attract a wide range of viewers, but they are expensive financially, and this may explain the spaced time periods in which they appear. The 2008 series "The Arabs of London", for example, was produced by Syrian-British director Anwar al-Qawadri and offered a deep analysis of the problems of identity, upbringing and second-generation Arabs in London.
It is an experience that unfortunately did not happen again over the 15 years until the production of the "London Batch". More sadly, Arab drama and cinema are deprived of a modern production by its talented director Anwar al-Qawadri, who still lives in London, an absence that production companies, platforms and television channels are asking about.
Syrian director Bassel al-Khatib's 2005 series "Nizar Qabbani" was also one such series. The series dealt with the biography of the late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, who is an Arab from London. The author and director masterfully mixed East and West in terms of visual, plot and characters and filmed almost all or most of his scenes in the British capital.
Arab drama did not benefit much from the waves of Arab immigration abroad that swept the Arab world during the past years for two reasons, the first of which is that the migration of creators was an individual migration and many big names in production and directing did not leave the Arab world. This put the Arab creator in the diaspora in a crisis between interesting stories and profound cultural and social transformations sweeping Arab immigrants and suitable for being distinguished dramas, and the lack of possibilities to transform these ideas into practical reality.
Secondly, because the experience of Arab drama is still related to the element of financier, production and governed by the television market, which makes the creator captive to this equation. The television market in general does not statistically recognize everyone who resides outside the Arab world geographically, because they are not among the target groups of advertising or targeted for influence if the commercial factor does not exist.
More than 100 years ago, Arabic poetry benefited from the migration of poets of the Levant to North America, and the phenomenon of diaspora poets was established, headed by Gibran Khalil Gibran, Mikhail Naima and Amin Rihani, and they established famous links such as the Pen League, and provided a creative experience that is still a reference for modern Arabic poetry. At the time, neither the means of communication nor the possibilities allowed to continue communicating with the Arab world or displaying live poetry production in real time, as is happening now online, but the creative experience achieved great success and spread.
Arab drama needs to achieve even a small part of this phenomenon with the increase in the number of Arabs in the diaspora of various Arab nationalities and the development of broadcasting and presentation techniques.