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Jamal solimane
Its main character is Yassin, a clean-living, middle-aged headmaster who does daily battle with corrupt teachers and troublesome students in his struggle to run a good school.
A serious professional who put his personal life on hold to care for younger siblings when his parents died, Yassin is drawn into romance after meeting the mother of one of his students at a parent-teacher event.
Dressed in a black gown and full-face veil when in public, Rahma portrays one of an increasing number of women to don the niqab in Egypt.
Rahma's husband died under torture by police investigating his ties to Islamist groups, and she becomes increasingly worried as she watches her teenage son Abdelrahman walk in his father's footsteps.
She first strikes up an email connection with Yassin to talk about her son's progress at school, but the conversation soon grows to take on wider topics, pitting his liberal views against her more conservative ideas.
Their online relationship evolves tentatively, eventually blooming into a romance played out on the Internet, until Yassin eventually proposes, without knowing what Rahma looks like behind her veil.
But the love relationship triggers a conflict between Yassin and his brother, a state security officer assigned to investigate Islamist groups in Egypt, who opposes their courtship.
That sub-plot sheds light on the heavy-handed police system in Egypt, where security authorities have wide powers under the country's decades-old and much-criticised emergency law.
More broadly, Yassin's family embodies a whole section of middle class society which is being pulled in different directions in modern-day Egypt.
He himself is a liberal, his brother is a state security officer, one sister is married to a physician who performs illegal abortions while a younger sister defies social conservatism by appearing in television ads in racy outfits.
And while the net gives Rahma space to communicate with her love interest away from society's prying eyes, it also leads her son deeper into involvement with extremist groups via Islamist websites.
"The series manages to capture the conflicts within middle class society and how extremism is able to seep into everyday life through upbringing or bad institutions", television critic Ola Shafei told AFP.
Fellow critic Ashraf Bayoumi also said the drama "intelligently" showed that the lack of a solid educational system meant youngsters had to look elsewhere for role models and mentors.
"The drama highlights the dangers of extremism in schools and later in universities. Islamic extremist groups can easily step in where the educational system has failed", he said.
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A serious professional who put his personal life on hold to care for younger siblings when his parents died, Yassin is drawn into romance after meeting the mother of one of his students at a parent-teacher event.
Dressed in a black gown and full-face veil when in public, Rahma portrays one of an increasing number of women to don the niqab in Egypt.
Rahma's husband died under torture by police investigating his ties to Islamist groups, and she becomes increasingly worried as she watches her teenage son Abdelrahman walk in his father's footsteps.
She first strikes up an email connection with Yassin to talk about her son's progress at school, but the conversation soon grows to take on wider topics, pitting his liberal views against her more conservative ideas.
Their online relationship evolves tentatively, eventually blooming into a romance played out on the Internet, until Yassin eventually proposes, without knowing what Rahma looks like behind her veil.
But the love relationship triggers a conflict between Yassin and his brother, a state security officer assigned to investigate Islamist groups in Egypt, who opposes their courtship.
That sub-plot sheds light on the heavy-handed police system in Egypt, where security authorities have wide powers under the country's decades-old and much-criticised emergency law.
More broadly, Yassin's family embodies a whole section of middle class society which is being pulled in different directions in modern-day Egypt.
He himself is a liberal, his brother is a state security officer, one sister is married to a physician who performs illegal abortions while a younger sister defies social conservatism by appearing in television ads in racy outfits.
And while the net gives Rahma space to communicate with her love interest away from society's prying eyes, it also leads her son deeper into involvement with extremist groups via Islamist websites.
"The series manages to capture the conflicts within middle class society and how extremism is able to seep into everyday life through upbringing or bad institutions", television critic Ola Shafei told AFP.
Fellow critic Ashraf Bayoumi also said the drama "intelligently" showed that the lack of a solid educational system meant youngsters had to look elsewhere for role models and mentors.
"The drama highlights the dangers of extremism in schools and later in universities. Islamic extremist groups can easily step in where the educational system has failed", he said.
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