A Young Saudi's Online Gambit

Comedy Writer Launches Site for 20-Something Arabs Starved for Entertainment

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A desire to bring to life his favorite heroes in Islamic history initially spurred Thamer al-Sikhan toward storytelling, and he wrote for hours every day: first historic series, then drama and comedy shows, and finally, when he was in college, a screenplay.

But in a country without much of an entertainment culture, with no movie industry, no performing arts schools, where cinemas are banned and television production is in its infancy, Sikhan knocked on many doors but could not find a way to bring his stories to the screen.

Then one evening, while watching an American Internet-based series, the animated "Happy Tree Friends," it was as if "a light bulb switched on" in his head, he said. "I thought: This is what I'm going to do. I don't need anyone else. I'll produce the shows myself, on the Web."

In February, Sikhan, 27, launched the Arab Internet Channel with two comedy shows he wrote, directed and produced. Since then, more than 2 million people in Saudi Arabia and in neighboring Arab countries have watched episodes online, downloaded them to their iPods or viewed them on their cellphones.

Advances in broadband technology, which allows for quick video streaming on most of today's standard computers, have not yet made a big impact in the Arab world, where high-speed connection fees remain expensive and only about 10 percent of the population has access to the Internet.

But the relative ease of setting up a site like the Arab Internet Channel highlights the possibilities the new technology brings to a new generation of regional filmmakers.

"Short film and video are the medium of self-expression for this generation," said Canadian writer and producer Jared Lorenz. "Young Saudis, like others of their generation around the world, communicate in videos. They have grown up with cameras and software that lets them make movies and understand the basic grammar of film, just as easily as their parents could type a letter or an e-mail."

The first comedy series recounts the travails of Talal al-Fadi, an unemployed, overweight, twenty-something Saudi modeled after some of Sikhan's real-life friends. Fadi's character satirizes a generation of young adults spoiled by the flowing oil wealth of the late '70s who, unlike their parents, were raised on free education and health care, were offered government subsidies with which to buy land and homes, and even were paid a monthly allowance to attend university.

In the show, "Why Me?," Fadi spends his time smoking a water pipe with friends and complaining about life, and expecting work, money and marriage to fall into his lap.

The second comedy, "Big Trouble," is about a burglar named Hassan who is enrolled in an academy for criminals. Hassan, played by Abdullah al-Zahrani, 31, must carry out a successful kidnapping in order to graduate, but his chosen victim, the buxom and matronly Umm Shawqat, played by a man, is an amnesiac who takes him for her long lost son and tries to teach him manners and find him a wife.

Saudi Arabia has one of the world's youngest populations, with more than 50 percent of its 22 million citizens younger than 21, and Sikhan credits the channel's popularity in part to the fact that there's not much for young Saudis to do. The kingdom has no public cinemas or theaters and few sports facilities or public parks.

Young men are not allowed into most malls because of laws that ban public mingling of unrelated men and women, and many spend their free time driving their cars, eating at American fast-food restaurants, watching satellite television or going online.