Stream or skip?

Dealing with a great, premature death in the family has been feed for drama and comedy for years, but there seems to be more of it in the past few decades. Maybe it's the success of this is usOr maybe just because we all feel our mortality in one way or another. However, a new series from Egypt combines heartache to lose a loved one with the comedy, to find out how to be a parent in 2025.

CATALOG: Stream or skip?

Opening shot: A car slowly moves to a cemetery in Egypt.

The Gist: Youssef (Mohamed Farag) brought his wife Amina (Riham Abdel Ghafour) there to show her the grave he wants to buy. She thinks the whole Maudlin is, but he wants to be prepared. The broker who sells the grave to Youssef recognizes Amina from her YouTube channel “Amina's Catalog”, where it gives parenting.

Youssef goes down with the broker to see the grave. When we see him again, he is disturbed. It is a year later and Youssef has just put Amina in this grave. She died after an illness that he really thought she would recover.

Youssef, his older daughter Karima (Rital Abdelaziz) and the younger son Mansour (Ali El Beiialy) return to the family's empty apartment and try to look at a life without Amina. One of the problems is that Youssef was a workaholic in the course of the children and left Amina's daily parent work. This is immediately evident when Mansour talks about his “menu”, which is detailed on an iPad that his mother has hidden somewhere in the apartment.

It is enough to say that Youssef is completely overwhelmed, what to do to do his children. He gets help and advice from his brother Hanafi (Khaled Kamal), a rather rugged man who is also Mansoura's football coach. He says Youssef that he should treat this as he learned to swim, and Hanafi throws him at the deep end of the pool. Amina's brother Osama (Ahmed Essam Elsayed) comes to stay with the family, but he is not much able to take care of children than Youssef.

Youssef has no idea that he has to leave the office to pick up his children from school. He forgets to pack lunch and at the end buy lunch from other children. He has no idea that Mansour is allergic to Ketchup, and lunch of another child lets his son break out. Karima wants him to record a video for Amina's channel to tell her viewers what happened. Karima does it himself, and when he watches the video, he goes back to look at Amina's first on the canal and realizes that she can turn to her to get advice via Amina's catalog.

What shows do you remind you of? catalog is a gentle, family -oriented dramedy that is supposed to pull on the heart. In many ways it is this is us With a much simpler timeline.

Our attitude: One of the things we tried again and again when we looked at the first episode of catalog Is Youssef really separated for the life of his children when Amina looks. We should believe that Youssef is such a workaholic that he simply had no time to manage the everyday life of the children. But the way he is shown is not as much a separate father as a absent.

Yes, we understand how Youssef build up his educational skills and combine with his children again and the joy of being involved in their lives. But the idea that he has no idea about his son's allergies or that he opposes the fact that he has to pick up his children in the middle of the working day simply rubs us in the wrong direction. He even fobs the participation in the “Mommies Group” on social media in his assistant.

At first we thought that this ignorance could be culturally. A scene in which Youssef speaks to another father in football practice and learns that the man goes to his child's practices because they do that when they let a father think something else. The parenthood of the 21st century, even in Egypt, is far too complex than that a parent is not involved. We would like to know more about how Youssef ended the end of the separation when Amina agreed and why he didn't even try to step in and do what he had to do for his children when she was sick.

Without a little bit of this information, it is difficult to get completely on board with Youssef's transformation. The letter contains a lot of character -driven humor, and the moments when he makes connections, be it with his children or even his rugging brother Hanafi, are actually well written and well deserved. We are even fans of the idea that Youssef will be a good parent through Amina's videos. But without knowing why and how Youssef was separated from his family in such a comprehensive manner, the story will feel a little hollow.

Sex and skin: None.

Farewell shot: Youssef sits at Amina's grave and sees the introductory video of his late wife and realizes that she can help him even though she is no longer nearby.

Sleeper Star: Khaled Kamal is great like Hanafi because he seems to be such a hard, factual type. But with his nephew Mansour, he is as warm as possible and the advice he gives his brother Youssef was a captain of the “team” who is his family was pretty much heart.

Most pilot line: Youssef has used an imaginary scapegoat called Fouli since his college, says his business partner Tamer (Sedky Sakhr). This joke feels smart at first, but fouli later comes up again, which already feels like it is too much.

Our call: Stream it. Despite the idea that we want more information about why Youssef was able to be with such a separate parent, we still enjoy the arch in which he experiences catalogWhich has some really funny and warm moments.

Joel Keller (@Joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenthood and technology, but he doesn't do himself: he is a TV junkie. His letter has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Rollingstone.comPresent Vanityfair.comFast society and elsewhere.