Breaking Bones but not taboos
How Syrian TV dramas help Assad deflect blame

With the holy month of Ramadan comes a bonanza of Arab TV dramas. The usually 30-episode telenovelas (known as musalsalat) are aired after the nightly iftar (breaking of the fast) - prime time - and have become an integral part of the Ramadan tradition, alongside overeating and visiting the mosque. Today, audiences are spoilt for choice as satellite broadcasters compete with streaming services for the best shows and the biggest share of advertising revenue. 

For Syrians, the show that easily outperformed all others this year was season two of kaser adem: al-saradeeb (“Breaking Bones: the Dungeons.”) Building on the success of the first season aired last year, scriptwriters Hilal Ahmed and Rand Hadid and director Kinan Iskandarani worked with Iyad Najjar’s Clacket Media production company to release season two, which was aired on five separate satellite channels during Ramadan, including the semi-official pro-regime channel LTV and the Saudi-owned MBC. According to its social media blurb, the drama “delves deep into three social classes and showcases aspects of the abuse of power by the upper class, a journey of misery for a young woman from the middle class, and the search of three young men from the bottom class for an escape from poverty.”  

Set in present day regime-held Syria, Breaking Bones is about a powerful and violent ring of corrupt mukhabarat officials desperately attempting to retrieve a hard drive containing incriminating evidence of their corruption, and the trail of human victims they leave behind in the process. Working to beat them to the evidence is Brigadier-General Kanaan Al-Sayegh, a spymaster (á la Ali Mamluk) tasked by “Higher Authorities” to investigate the ring and bring it to book. The show does not shy away from portraying in graphic detail torture in prisons (hence the “dungeons” in the title), or in showing how senior officials and criminals work together in the Captagon trade. The misery, violence, and humiliation of everyday existence in a lawless and mafia-infested collapsing state is accurately reflected in the show. On the surface, it is a highly critical work bordering on the seditious: the pro-opposition Syria TV also aired the show. 

Look closer though and you notice what’s missing. In fact, dramas tackling corruption and malpractice by the government bureaucracy or the security forces have been a staple diet of Syrian dramas since the early-2000s. Indeed, the original storyline for Breaking Bones was written in 2011 and was based on the cliques and corruption of that period. 

Dramas like this can be made in a totalitarian police state because there is a well-established formula for “artistic critique” that does not overstep ‘red lines’, which satirists Mohammed Maghout, Dureid Laham, and Yaser al-Azma perfected in the 1980s and 1990s. The formula is simple: keep the President and his family out of the script, and regard their unspoken existence as either benign, or irrelevant to the course of events in the drama. The Assads are thus treated like Roman gods: invisible, aloof, looking down on human folly and greed with a mixture of disdain and amusement. What really matters for the regime censors isn’t the bad things the government is shown to be doing (everyone knows what they are after all), but who is shown to be responsible. As long as wrongdoings can be blamed squarely on the weak morals of civil servants and their entourages - and not on the Assad family - artistic critiques are not only tolerated but sometimes even encouraged as a form of useful catharsis. It is known popularly as tanfees: “letting the air out.”  

Tanfees is much needed in today’s Syria. The precipitous decline in state services, the collapse of the economy, and the exponential growth of corruption fuelled by warlordism and profiteering, have prompted sharp criticism from sections of the population that were hitherto loyal and silent. Against that backdrop, television dramas like "Breaking Bones" are a powerful tool for the regime to shape narratives and deflect blame. 

The success of Syrian television dramas, however, has broader implications for Assad. By exporting these shows to other Arab countries and beyond, the regime presents an image of cultural vitality and creativity, challenging perceptions of Syria as a nation in crisis. This soft power projection helps bolster the regime's legitimacy on the international stage, countering efforts by foreign governments and organisations to subject it to sanctions and isolation. Little wonder, then, that a day before the start of Ramadan Assad met a group of Syrian actors and directors and, according to the SANA news agency, “held a dialogue about the drama industry and the challenges of production, scripts, and photography, and the current role of dramatic works within society, and supporting their production in the future.” Photos of the meeting were widely circulated on social media. On 23 April, Assad issued a decree for the establishment of a new Ministry of Information whose goal was said to be: “Establishing the foundations and controls necessary to regulate the media sector, in accordance with the general policy of the state, and cooperating and participating with the public and private sectors to invest in the media sector, drama production and documentary films in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations.” This comes two years to the day after an Electronic Crimes Law was promulgated (Law 20/2022) that introduced harsher penalties for “cybercrimes” that target public officials or employees, entrenching impunity for corrupt and abusive officials and public employees.

As he moves to strengthen control over the media sector with the establishment of a new Ministry of Information, it becomes increasingly clear that Assad views cultural production as a strategic tool for maintaining power and deflecting blame. Bones may still be broken in regime dungeons, but taboos may not.