Alif Laila (Old Doordarshan TV Serial)
Alif Laila was an old television show for the kids. The show was based on the famous compilation of short stories namely One Thousand and One Nights. The short stories’ compilation OTON was based on stories on kings, queens and dacoits of Middle Eastern countries and South-East Asian countries. The show was aired during early 90s on the national channel.
Alif Laila was one of those shows on TV that were loved by all ages. The show was specially designed for the kids as it was based on fantasy stories. A renowned production house that was famous for creating mythological shows at that point of time had produced and directed the show.
Alif Laila had also won television awards for its creation and acting. The show won the best outstanding show of the year back at that time. There were couple of seasons of the show aired on two different channels. Later on a private channel had taken the copyright of airing the show late in the 20s.
Plot
As said, the show was based on short stories related to King and Queen of Middle Eastern Countries. The first episode was started with the Queen telling stories to the King. In each episode the queen came up with a new story with a bunch of new characters. There were a lot of actors who played miscellaneous characters on the show.
The show consisted of mini stories shown one in each episode. One of the episodes had the famous dacoit character Ali Baba. There is no one who was born in 90s yet don’t know about Ali Baba and 40 thieves’ story. One of the many episodes there was one that had Ali Baba’s story as well.
There were other stories like The Old Man and The Goat, Aladin and Wonderful Lamp, The Fisherman and the Djinn and others. Aladin, Ali Baba, The old man are some of the famous stories that are still loved by the kids. Alif Laila is an Urdu phrase that means thousands nights, originated from the book OTON.
Relevance Today
Talking about the relevancy of the show today, I can only ask you a question. Don’t you still love a cat chasing a naughty mouse across the house? Yes we all do love it. Alif Laila is one such show that makes you feel relax. It does not matter whether you are 10 years or 50 years of age, fantasy stories that have magic and tricks always make you smile, make you feel light.
The show used to come on weekends when the kids were at home. When the show re-telecast again on a private channel few years back, it received same reception like before. In fact a little more as now we have better exposure of television and media unlike earlier times.
Dorrdarshan is one such channel that offered every type of shows from family drama, social drama, kids’ show and fantasy shows to its audiences. Alif Laila can be placed on top of the list of kids’ shows. Kids used to enjoy the episodes as the acting, tricks and magic, supernatural things that were shown on the show were commendable. Before Alif Laila, there were no such shows came in to television. People from that era call it a refreshing show. But still today it makes us hook to the television screen every weekend as it still makes you smile.
Aladin and Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba & 40 thieves are the stories that still kids read on their kindles or tabs (if we not consider the paper-made books in this generation). The Genie stories and how he helps Aladin in every situation still makes us go crazy. The show is old but I must say the magic is still the same.
| Important Details of the show | |
| Name of the show | Alif Laila |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi |
| Subject | Fantasy |
| Banner (Production house) | Sagar Films Pvt. Ltd. |
| Director | Anand, Prem and Moti Sagar |
| Creator | Sagar Ent. Ltd. |
| Producer | Subhash Sagar |
| Dialogue written by | |
| Story writer | Ramanand Sagar |
| Official Site Address | http://www.sagartv.com/alif-laila.htm |
| Telecast Details | |
| Telecast Date | 1993 |
| Aired on | Doordarshan |
| Telecast episodes | 260 |
| Episode length | 23 minutes |
| Telecast season no. | 2 |
| Cast Details | |
| Character name | Real name |
| Sultan Shahryar | Girija Shankar |
| Queen Scheherazade | Seema Kanwal |
| Ali Baba (dacoit) | Shah Nawaz |
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