Guest House (TV series)
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Guest House (Urdu script: گیسٹ ہاؤس) is a Pakistani comedy drama series which was produced and ran by PTV in early to middle 1990s. The setting is a fictional guest house named Welcome Guest House located in a posh area of Islamabad. It is run by Mr. Shameem and his wife with the help of three permanent regular employees Nasir, Murad and Rambo. The series' theme appears to have been derived from the British sitcom Fawlty Towers.
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[edit] Plot
The story of every episode starts with arrival of new guests and the involvement of guest house's employees in their comic and tragic situations. Almost every episode ended with the solution of problems of the guests with the help of all-too-readily helpful employees and reluctant owners of the guesthouse.
[edit] John Rambo Cockroach Killer
Pilot episode introduces the janitor of the guest house, John Rambo, in a very dramatic way. He is holding a wiper like a rifle or machine gun and a thrilling background music is playing. Camera moves in a way that the wiper actually looked like a rifle at the beginning of the scene. Later it turns out that John Rambo Cockroach Killer is a spin-off from the main character of the movie First Blood. Rambo was an instant hit and played a vital role in the popularity of the series. Producers wanted to remove the character of Rambo after the pilot episode, but its success made them to decide otherwise. One of the producers admitted on TV that after the success of Rambo in pilot episodes, every episode's main focus was the janitor of the guest house.
[edit] Characters and cast
[edit] Mr. Shameem played by Khalid Hafeez
He is the founder and owner of the guest house. He is in his fifties. He is a dedicated husband and does not have any children. Although he is very faithful to his wife but she always suspects him having an affair and/or having another wife (in Islamic Pakistan a man can have up to 4 wives) mostly because he likes to flirt and has been caught doing so many times. He is financially very careful and doesn't like his wife's occasional shopping sprees; which are the main cause of domestic disputes.
Mr. Shameem is a good businessman is always ready to please his guests and tries to meet their often outrageous demands. He is a strict taskmaster and often deducts small amounts from the salaries of his employees in order to punish them.
Unlike his employees, he does not like to get involved in the personal problems of his guests, however, he often finds himself in situations where he has to get involved to bail out his employees and save the reputation of his guest house.
[edit] Mrs. Shameem played by Sarwat Ateeque
She is wife of Mr. Shameem and her real name is never used to call her. She has almost same powers in the matters of the guest house as her husband, however, she scarcely uses them. She loves shopping and complains that his husband is greedy and doesn't support her in shopping. She is nostalgic and always remembers her long hair she had in her youth. She is very compassionate and easily gets involved in the personal matters of the guests. She often takes sides of the women in domestic disputes of the guests. She can easily find the reflections of her own personal life in personal problems of others.
She is very soft on the employees and often takes their side and tries to stop her husband from punishing them. She even hid Rambo in a room when he was fired by her husband. Later she persuaded Mr. Shameem to rehire the same janitor.
[edit] John Rambo played by Afzal Khan
He is the janitor of the guest house. He is illiterate and belongs to a village in the suburbs of the city. He is simple, honest and has very high self-esteem. He never accepts any tips and feels offended if offered by someone. He can be easily persuaded into anything if he feels it is moraly right. In one episode he went on a mission against pollution and got beaten when he tried to stop a pop concert to prevent noise pollution.
He is obsessed with Hollywood action movies, Rambo trilogy in particular, and wants to be an action hero. Many guests have tried to exploit his ambition for movies often costing him financial loses. He wears a sleeve-less black t-shirt with skull over crossed bones in its centre and a pair of loose orange pajamas. He has a butterfly tattoo on each of his arms just below the shoulder. He has a rather strange style of introducing himself. He crosses his arms keeping them at a small distance from his body, poses his head at an angle to his torso and says this English sentence in local accent:
- "My name is Rambo Rambo, John Rambo, Silver Stallone, Cockroach Killer"
(He always mispronounces Sylvester Stallone as Silver Stallone.)
When he is excited he adds After Kar at the beginning of his signature sentence. After Kar is a combinantion of After All and Aakhir Kar (Urdu: آخر کار). Both of these phrases have same meanings in English and Urdu respectively.
He always wears a wiper like a rifle on his back. His well-intentioned miss-adventures and indulgence into private lives of the guests often put him in trouble with Mr. Shameem where Mrs. Shameem comes to his rescue who has sisterly affection for him.
He has a fiancée, named Jeeran, who lives in his village. He often daydreams about her.
[edit] Trivia
- Afzal Khan's is said to have striking resemblance with Sylvester Stallone.
- Guest House was such a super hit series in Pakistan that people wrote letters to PTV never to finish it.
- Guest House was famous among children as Rambo wala drama which means the drama with Rambo.
