We won’t be off the mark if we say this piece of news will cheer countless female fans across the country. Eight years since we last saw Fawad Khan in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), the Pakistani actor is set to return to Indian screens with Barzakh. In 2021, mid-day had reported that Khan and director Asim Abbasi were collaborating on a show that would be available to Indian audiences (There’s place for all in this artistic landscape, Dec 15, 2021). Sure enough, from July 19, the actor-director duo’s labour of love will stream on ZEE5 and Zindagi’s YouTube channel.

This time, Abbasi—the director of Cake (2018) and Churails (2020)—has experimented with magic realism. When we begin our chat on a Zoom call, the director says the inspiration behind Barzakh could well be Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “I was given a blank canvas. The [channel heads] had faith in me after Churails did well. I have made something that is part literature, part philosophy. It moves between a dysfunctional family story and magic realism,” he says.