The situation must be addressed realistically, said actor Samar Qahtan. In a phone interview with Al-Monitor, Qahtan acknowledged that Iraqi drama is not up to par with general Arab drama, and that its situation is unstable.
According to Qahtan, Iraqi drama is still relatively new. He holds that one cannot compare current Iraqi drama to its period prior to 2003. Back then, the state was in control of production, there was a single TV channel and total production did not exceed two works per year, with all available resources tapped to make them successful. He noted that with production this scarce, Iraq could not be considered to support an important and influential industry.
Following 2003, a large number of TV channels were created and the demand for TV production increased. As qualified artists were limited, the new stations and producers were forced to resort to staff new to the industry.
Qahtan asked, “When they decided to produce 15 TV series per year, did the Iraqi TV channels’ supervisors ask where they could get technical staff to cover all of these works?” He said it was possible to address a large part of the problem by distributing the budget of these series over two or three works with a good story, competent producers and a well-paid technical staff.
It seems that the problem starts with policy. Qahtan did not deny that Iraqi TV channels were working to produce a large number of TV series. The latter are increasing and fill a great deal of air time. Qahtan confirmed this view. He said, “The producing channels care less about quality; rather, they are interested in filling up air time. This is why they do not mind hiring a non-specialist writer, or assigning the work to a greedy producer, who assigns the work to a weak producer agreeing to his own conditions. The final product ends up with amateur actors, so one can imagine the quality of the works offered to the audience.”
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