In curfew conditions, TV has a captive audience - and Iraq's very own Oprah is not the only one making the most of it, writes Alex Thomson in Baghdad
A young couple in Sadr City, Baghdad, have found the home of their dreams. In fact, they used to live in it until a laser-guided missile turned it into a pile of rubble. Any ideas? This is reality TV, where contestants are chosen not so much because they are stuck for their next move but because their house has been bombed to smithereens. All you have to do is have your place wasted by war and you too could be a lucky winner with a brand new house built to your own specifications.
At this point, enter Shaima Zubeir. With film crew in tow, the presenter and face of the new Iraqi TV selects the possible winners for each edition of the show and sends in the brickies to rebuild. Just when the US announces that it's calling time on improving Iraq's infrastructure, reality TV steps in.
Nobody is pretending that this peculiarly Iraqi morphing of makeover TV is going to reduce the rubble mountain in Baghdad - let alone elsewhere in the country - but for the lucky few in possession of a working television it offers an increasingly popular escape from the daily experience of war.
For an audience starved of home-grown entertainment for so many years, Shaima is a marvel. She swirls into action flicking her shawled head in the dust of what used to be a chosen family's home, directing the crew, builders and architects. She's one of the few prominent Iraqi women on TV, but rarer still, she's made the move from studio-based potted-plant Saddam-TV to the free-for-all of modern Baghdad light entertainment.
Known as Iraq's very own Oprah and voted Iraq's favourite television personality, Shaima's telegenic warmth has inspired affection and awe from a huge fan base across the country.
"I went into a shop to buy clothes and there was a mother and daughter," she says as her crew van speeds across Baghdad on a shoot. "The child came up to me and touched the hem of my jacket, rubbed it a bit. She looked at her mum and said 'look, mum, she's real'."
As Shaima talks, her bodyguards look on. Unlike the army of makeover artists at work in TV in other countries, Shaima and crew go everywhere with armed protection. Fame is no insurance against the kidnappers and militias. In fact, quite the reverse. The programme's researcher, Majeed al Samera, is quite frank about the risks.
"Shaima is a heroine and a star," she says. "She's on a suicide bid, taking risks with her life for the sake of others. She has often experienced difficulties. I don't envy her her fame, because fame brings trouble."
TROUBLE, IN BAGHDAD terms, means death, but Shaima herself plays down the risk to herself. It is cameramen who are always potential targets, she says. They have to go out again and again to shoot the necessary video, while she can stay safely indoors.
Nevertheless, like most Baghdadis, she has lost people and continues to lose people.
"We all have our pains that we are dealing with," she says. "Every day you delete a name from the list on your mobile. We lose people in assassinations, explosions, booby traps. So we eat and drink with death, but we still go out to work."
Shaima's show airs under the rather clunky title Labour and Materials - but then the function of the programme is every bit as important as the entertainment. Producers, presenter, researcher - all believe the programme is about providing a social service and not simply diverting a vast and curfew-captive audience.
"In the rest of the world, reality TV is a kind of entertainment but our show expresses a kind of burning pain," says director Ali Hannoun. "We deal with broken cities and destitute people. So this is reality TV with a flavour of Iraqi pain."
Shaima's channel, Al Sharqiya, mixes reality strands with current affairs. It is also home to a particularly unsubtle line in TV satire, as in Caricature, one of its best-loved comedy shows, which features sketches of thinly disguised politicians talking nonsense at press conferences while ogling the female reporters. At a time when you can at least laugh at the ex-boss, taking the mickey out of Saddam-era moustaches is a hit with punters.
Iraq's most popular show, perhaps not surprisingly, is the talent show, Iraq Star. Al Sumariya, the TV channel that broadcasts the show, doesn't trouble itself with news or current affairs. A little more than a year old, it has come from nowhere to top the ratings with its wholehearted blend of education and escapist entertainment.
GHANEM HAMEED, ONE of its founders, says satellite TV stations have mushroomed in Baghdad, in three distinct camps. Firstly, there are the religious and propaganda stations; then there are the channels set up entirely for trade and money-making; and lastly, there are the channels that are all about, as he puts it, "creating hope for Iraqis".This, naturally, is where his channel and shows such as Iraq Star come in.
Across town on any given day you might also catch the filming of the latest edition of Colour of Ash, a popular soap opera. But this favourite is perhaps the best example of how even escapist entertainment is not safe from the ongoing conflict. Whole sequences of the show were recently re-scripted and re-shot when the actor playing a key character was arrested. He is expected to be charged with offences related to the insurgency.
"Anyone can be arrested," says a bewildered Walid Shamel Al Douri, former drama teacher at Baghdad University and now a full-time soap star. "The situation is not normal, so we are really working under the gun. But I think living on the edge has some excitement, some challenge - that's what I believe."
One wonders whether his arrested colleague feels the same way. Among the cast of Colour of Ash, the rumour is that he will be seen one day soon on Terrorism in the Hands of Justice. The premise of this show is that - after unseen, unknown "persuasion" - people are put before the cameras, where they simply sit and confess, to shooting, bombing, hijacking, though never anything as minor as the occasional speed-camera infringement.
Whatever terrorism and justice might be, this ain't them. The programme is a nasty, sinister, genuinely disturbing experience to watch. Ironically, it's just the kind of show the old Ba'athist goons would have enjoyed.
So how does it play in the new Iraq? Why, it's a runaway success of course.
Alex Thomson is a news presenter for Channel 4 television. Additional reporting by Fiona Campbell