Skip to content
ShowBuzzDramas · Movies · Shows
Menu
DramasMoviesUpcomingHollywoodBlockbustersShowsCelebritiesCelebrity newsFeaturesAboutContact

Editorial · November 2026

Classic PTV dramas that still hold up

Long before YouTube clips and nightly Ramadan specials, Pakistan Television (PTV) turned short Urdu serials into shared events. Streets went quiet for big episodes. Families abroad taped them onto VHS. The best of those plays — sharp writing, tight casts, stories that still feel human — still reward a first watch for viewers anywhere in the world. This is not a ranking of every great PTV title, and it is not a remake of our modern top-20 list. It is a viewing guide to six classics that keep coming up whenever people argue about what television used to get right. Credits and years were checked against published sources.

Why these still matter

PTV's golden run sat between a thin cinema industry and the later cable boom. Writers such as Amjad Islam Amjad, Haseena Moin, Anwar Maqsood and Shoaib Mansoor worked with directors who shot for a national audience in one language everyone in the house could follow. Episodes were few by today's standards. Characters had room to breathe. Comedy did not need cruelty, and romance did not need a hundred-episode stretch. That economy is why newer hits — from Humsafar to Ramadan favourites like Suno Chanda — still get compared with the old PTV standard, even when the channels and budgets have changed.

The range on this list matters as much as the nostalgia. Waris is rural power and inheritance. Ankahi and Tanhaiyaan are urban wit with young women at the centre. Aangan Terha is political satire dressed as household comedy. Dhoop Kinare is a workplace romance that treats a hospital ward as seriously as a drawing room. Alpha Bravo Charlie mixes friendship, service and adventure. Together they show what a single public broadcaster could do before private networks multiplied the schedule: different genres, shared craft, and casts that became household names without needing a film-star launch.

  1. 1. Waris (1979–80)

    Written by: Amjad Islam Amjad

    Directed by: Nusrat Thakur and Ghazanfer Ali

    Starring: Mehboob Alam, Abid Ali, Munawar Saeed, Uzma Gillani, Samina Ahmad

    PTV Lahore's feudal family saga emptied streets when it aired. Poet-playwright Amjad Islam Amjad wrote the story of Chaudhry Hashmat and the fight over Sikandarpur as a dam project threatened ancestral land. Mehboob Alam's Hashmat stuck so hard that the actor was identified with the role for the rest of his life. Dawn later recalled how even airline crews were said to delay take-off to finish an episode. The serial was later translated into Chinese and remains the template for rural power stories on South Asian TV.

  2. 2. Ankahi (1982)

    Written by: Haseena Moin

    Directed by: Shoaib Mansoor and Mohsin Ali

    Starring: Shehnaz Sheikh, Shakeel, Javed Sheikh, Saleem Nasir, Jamshed Ansari, Behroze Sabzwari, Qazi Wajid, Badar Khalil

    Haseena Moin's witty Karachi comedy made Shehnaz Sheikh a star overnight as Sana Murad, a young woman who talks her way into jobs she cannot do and still wins the room. The ensemble — including Saleem Nasir's mamoon Shehryar, Timmy and Moby — is still quoted in living rooms decades later. It was Shehnaz Sheikh's first TV serial and one of Moin's clearest proofs that light comedy could outlast heavier prestige plays. PTV Home retelecast it in 2020, and Bollywood's Chal Mere Bhai (2000) has long been cited as borrowing from its blueprint.

  3. 3. Aangan Terha (1984–85)

    Written by: Anwar Maqsood

    Directed by: Qaiser Farooq

    Starring: Shakeel, Bushra Ansari, Saleem Nasir, Arshad Mehmood, Durdana Butt

    Anwar Maqsood's satirical household comedy used a crooked courtyard — a retired civil servant, his sharp-tongued wife, a classical-dancer turned servant, and the neighbours — to poke at bureaucracy, martial-law politics and social hypocrisy without naming every target. Guest turns by Moin Akhtar, Lehri and Alamgir kept it feeling like an event. The dialogue still reads cleanly; The Friday Times listed it among PTV's lasting impact plays as recently as 2025.

  4. 4. Tanhaiyaan (1985–86)

    Written by: Haseena Moin

    Directed by: Shahzad Khalil

    Starring: Shehnaz Sheikh, Marina Khan, Asif Raza Mir, Badar Khalil, Behroze Sabzwari, Qazi Wajid

    Two sisters lose their parents and their house, move in with their aunt in Karachi, and try to buy the house back. Shehnaz Sheikh's Zara and Marina Khan's Sanya made female independence look ordinary rather than preachy, with Asif Raza Mir's Zain as the childhood friend who stays. Marina Khan won a Nigar Award for Best Actress; Shahzad Khalil won Best Producer. A sequel, Tanhaiyan Naye Silsilay, arrived in 2012 with Marina Khan directing.

  5. 5. Dhoop Kinare (1987)

    Written by: Haseena Moin

    Directed by: Sahira Kazmi

    Starring: Rahat Kazmi, Marina Khan, Badar Khalil, Sajid Hassan, Qazi Wajid

    A Karachi hospital romance between the severe Dr Ahmer Ansari (Rahat Kazmi) and the freewheeling young doctor Zoya Ali Khan (Marina Khan). Sahira Kazmi directed; the title music drew on Faiz Ahmed Faiz, sung by Nayyara Noor. Families abroad passed VHS copies around the Gulf, and Sony Entertainment Television in India remade it as Kuch Toh Log Kahenge (2011) after Haseena Moin approved Kamlesh Pandey's adaptation. It is still the PTV show people mean when they say "hospital romance".

  6. 6. Alpha Bravo Charlie (1998)

    Written by: Shoaib Mansoor

    Directed by: Shoaib Mansoor

    Starring: Faraz Inam, Abdullah Mehmood, Qasim Khan, Shahnaz Khawaja

    Made with ISPR, this follow-up to Sunehray Din (1991) follows three army friends — Faraz, Kashif and Gulsher — through training, Siachen and a UN peacekeeping stint in Bosnia. Romance and comedy sit beside the operations, which is why it still gets Defence Day rewatches. Later friendship-and-service serials such as Ehd-e-Wafa walk a related path for a new generation of viewers.

How they reached the world

These serials were made for a single national broadcaster, but their afterlife was never only local. Gulf households passed cassette copies of Dhoop Kinare and Ankahi from flat to flat. Indian channels remade or openly nodded at plots — Sony's Kuch Toh Log Kahenge adapted Dhoop Kinare, and Chal Mere Bhai has long been linked to Ankahi's comic energy. YouTube and PTV retelecasts later put full episodes in front of diaspora viewers who had only heard their parents quote Timmy, Qabacha or Dr Ahmer. The writers behind several of these titles — especially Haseena Moin — are profiled in our feature on the women who write Pakistani dramas. That piece covers the novelists and screenwriters of the private-channel era; this one looks earlier, at the PTV plays that set the bar those writers inherited.

Where to start

New to classic PTV? Start with Ankahi if you want wit, Dhoop Kinare if you want a workplace romance, and Alpha Bravo Charlie if you prefer friendship under pressure. Waris is the heavier feudal drama; Aangan Terha is the satire night; Tanhaiyaan is the sisters' story that bridges comedy and loss. None of these needs a marathon commitment by modern standards, which is part of their appeal: you can finish one over a weekend and still feel you have met a complete world.

Availability shifts by country and platform, so check the services and official uploads where you live. Picture quality on old transfers varies; the writing and performances are what travel. For later hits that carried the same storytelling hunger onto private channels, see our top 20 Pakistani dramas of all time and browse all dramas. Army-friendship fans of Alpha Bravo Charlie may also like Ehd-e-Wafa, which updates the service-and-friends idea for a multi-channel age.

Sources