In a Canadian-style house in Toronto, Dr. Samiha (the artist Yousra) listens with her sons Sameh and Samah to the will of her late husband, read by the family's lawyer, to be surprised that what she thought was an inheritance of debts left to her by her husband turned into a fortune estimated at millions of dollars, waiting for her when she returns to Egypt to meet "Grandma Soso".
Thus, after 25 years of absence from Egypt, Dr. Samiha decides to return with her two sons to their country to search for the inheritance of her late husband, and meets the lawyer's brother and wife and they begin the journey of searching for the alleged inheritance.
This is the basic idea of the series "1000 Hamdallah A. Al-Salama", participating in the drama Ramadan 2023, written by Mohamed Zulfiqar, directed by Amr Salah and produced by Al-Adl Group, and starring Yousra, Shaima Seif, Mohamed Tharwat, Mayan Al-Sayed, Adam Al-Sharqawi, and Mahraganat singer Mustafa Anba.
short time
The series never takes long to get into the main story, from the first scene we understand the story, but everything gets complicated from the first hours to reach Cairo. The family loses their bags, including money and Canadian passports, and discovers that their apartment in downtown Cairo was sold without their knowledge, and the mother and son spend their first night at the police station while the daughter spends the night on the Nile Corniche with an Egyptian young man she meets for the first time.
To its credit, "1000 Hamdallah A. Al-Salama" was able to present its first episodes in no more than 24 hours since the family's arrival in Cairo, where difficulties follow one after another, but the rhythm sometimes slowed down and the scenes became long sketches and unfunny Ifhat to fill the episodes.
Outstanding Performance
The best thing about the series is the very good employment of the characters, and here the young actor Adam Al-Sharqawi is employed in the appropriate role, as an Egyptian who holds a foreign nationality and lived his entire life abroad, and the viewer can easily accept his inauthentic accent, contrary to the questions that were put to the viewer's mind about his role in the series "Majnouna Beck" last year.
We see Mahraganat singer Mustafa Anba in his first role as an actor in the character of the young Egyptian son of the popular class Al-Jada, who sells drinks on the Nile Corniche, rides a bike, suffers and gets tired all day, and intervenes to help the Canadian-Egyptian girl.
No criticism
Followers of Ramadan drama have been accustomed to a series by Yousra for more than 20 years, as she is the only one of her generation who always maintains the presence, trying to renew her blood between social drama and comedy.
This time, Yusra presents a traditional theme about the migrant returning home, only to be surprised by what has changed in his country or face new challenges and be treated like a foreigner. The famous theme that we have seen repeatedly in Egyptian films, the most famous of which are the film "Black Honey", "The World on the Wing of Yamama", and the series "Empire of Meen".
In the film "Black Honey", which was released in theaters in 2010, comedy is generated by the negative way Egyptians deal with the Egyptian-American young man named "Masry" (Ahmed Helmy), similar to the attempts of the taxi driver to deceive him and exploit him financially, or how his treatment is completely different after he loses his American passport and becomes an ordinary Egyptian citizen without an American identity, and the bureaucracy of government departments he faces, and after all these criticisms, the film focuses on the beautiful Egyptian spirit and that there is always something Beautiful, and "sweet need".
On the contrary, the makers of the series stay away from direct criticism of Egyptian society, as well as the difference in the treatment received by citizens of foreign and Egyptian nationality, commensurate with the official production body and political orientations, and the series tries to extract comedy from the way of thinking of heroes coming from another world to Egypt, whether in their naïve and deficient way of thinking or comedic situations in the house of Mohamed Tharwat and Shaima Seif.
sitcom
We cannot take the events seriously, everything seems comic and ironic, starting with the poor montage pieces that the director uses to move from one place to another, and not ending with the makers of the series using a simple pillow as a metaphor for the infant "Ozo" Ibn Akram (Muhammad Tharwat) and Fawqia (Shaima Seif), with the use of the sound of a child's crying, to convince us that we are in front of a real child.
Is it really true that the makers of the series – and we are in 2023 – unable to use a real baby, or is it intended to convince the viewer that he is really in front of a sitcom?
Caricature characters
Also, all the characters look very simple caricatures. Samiha has a doctorate, but she thinks everyone around her is trying to deceive her, and her daughter, who wants to become a famous film director, receives the Cannes Prize, like Youssef Chahine, while everything she knows about Egyptian society is inspired by Egyptian films.
We also see the overly perfect figure of police officer Hossam (Ahmed Abdel Wahab), a quiet officer who respects the defendants to the fullest, allows them to make their calls from his mobile phone, and takes them in his car to the prosecution. But who cares about all these details ?! We are facing a sitcom, which we can never take seriously.
The comedy series "1000 Praise be to Allah for Safety" directed by Amr Salah does not have good viewership rates or noticeable interaction on social media, but it still retains the quiet presence of the artist Yousra in the Ramadan drama season, which does not care much to provoke controversy or interest in competing for the best, only by presenting a work of art to the public that may sometimes achieve great success such as "above the level of suspicion", or may go unnoticed.