Riyadh - Saudi Arabia's speaker of the Council of Shurah has defended Tuesday a TV comedy series that has angered everybody from fundamentalists to liberals with its sardonic imagery and acerbic satire. The speaker of the Council of Shurah, Salih bin Hamid, rejected a request by a councillor for a formal reaction to a Saudi TV comedy named Tash Ma Tash, which has recently ridiculed the country's liberals.
Bin Hamid said at a sitting of the council that criticism voiced in the media of the kingdom's political and other institutions was important.
The council of Shurah is a 120-member consultative body with no real powers.
Tash Ma Tash is a sketch comedy series that has become a smash hit among Saudi viewers during Ramadan over the last years. Through a combination of satire and lampooning, the series has crossed red lines by challenging the kingdom's sacrosanct institutions.
The show has the blessing of members of the Saudi royal family who are in favour of limited political reforms.
In one episode, members of the religious police are mocked and shown in a sketch where one of them suggests that women riding donkeys should be protected from men on the roads by digging tunnels for women only.
Predictably, the episode angered fundamentalists, prompting some preachers to lead their prayers with a call on God to bring down his wrath upon the programme makers.
In the episode shown on Saturday, the country's liberals and reformists are ridiculed and depicted as nothing more than a clique of pro-government technocrats and academics.
The episode upset liberals, including some members of the Council of Shurah.
With criticism coming from the ultra-conservative and liberals, the programme makers' confidence in their show's non-partisan objectivity has been boosted.
"We have a transparent message about the society in which we live," the show's director, Abdel-Khalik al-Ghanim, told the London- based al-Hayat newspaper.
