Playing with time

The Saudi TV show Jameel Jeddan airs on Shahid. (Courtesy imdb)

Jameel is gazing out the backseat window of her taxi when she spots a glamorous brunette cruising along in a roofless mustard-yellow sports car. “Wow. Even women can drive now?” she says to herself, looking on in amazement. 

Jameel is the main character in Jameel Jeddan, a new, critically acclaimed Saudi TV series about a young woman who wakes up after five years in a coma to a transformed kingdom, where the power of ultra-conservative clerics has waned. The comedy-drama is the first Saudi TV show to be written by and star a Saudi woman. 

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Finding a voice

June 2022 edition. (Courtesy Monocle)

“There is no media industry in Russia any more – the Kremlin destroyed everything,” says Galina Timchenko, CEO of Meduza, one of the largest Russian independent news outlets still in operation. “Those who are still inside Russia are under wartime censorship.” Timchenko knows a fair bit about censorship. She launched Meduza in 2014 after being sacked from lenta.ru for its critical coverage of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. Timchenko packed her bags and set up shop in Riga, Latvia, telling a colleague that she wanted to launch a site where “if somebody cuts off our head, two will emerge”.

The colleague told her to call it Meduza, confusing the serpent-haired gorgon (also known as Medusa) with mythological monster Hydra. “It was the mistake of a guy who had been up all night,” says Timchenko, laughing. The image of many heads remains apt: the outlet now employs some 40 journalists and reaches millions of people every month, the majority of whom are in Russia.

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