Lazawal Ishq: Performing Pyaar for Pakistan

When Lazawal Ishq was first announced, a friend and I were feverishly writing long essays to each other on WhatsApp about the destabilising potential of a reality dating show in Pakistan. In a society where desire of any kind is heavily policed, a show exclusively centred on finding your own partner while the country watches held potential. This is the same Pakistan where, as recently as 1996, a woman had to approach the Lahore High Court simply to assert her right to marry of her own free will - in the infamous Saima Waheed case. These are not freedoms women in Pakistan take lightly. They are fraught and remain precarious, as evidenced by the number of honour killings reported each year of women and men for simply choosing their own partners.

Most essays about reality television do not start with such sobering reminders, but it is hard to unsee patriarchy as the titular character of Lazawal Ishq. Most reality television dating shows are known to be laced with sexism and unequal power dynamics, yet Lazawal Ishq truly delivers on that promise. My friend, who vowed to watch the show with me as part of our long-distance best friendship rituals, gave up quite soon. The predictability of the blatant misogyny and glacial pacing of the show was too much for her to persist with it. I found myself, then, in a subreddit of like-minded individuals with hilarious usernames who too could not look away. Many people on the subreddit said they enjoyed having the show on in the background while they worked or did chores. But why the audience flocked to discuss it was because of the contradictions it laid bare about Pakistani society.

What was immediately striking to me was the contestants’ own understanding of the show. Many declared both during and after the show that it is not a dating show, or at least not that kind of dating show. This all comes to a head when most of the contestants banded together to express their outrage over a kiss on the cheek. Men and women alike were up in arms, declaring families were watching; surely dating did not mean such vulgar displays of affection? What made this confusing was how and why an arbitrary line was drawn; earlier in the show, for example, we had seen these same outraged couples holding hands, but a peck on the cheek was somehow collectively understood to be too much.

It is difficult to separate the performance of morality from any form of dating practice in Pakistan. While Pakistani society is beginning to acknowledge that people date and choose their own partners, that does not include an acknowledgement, much less acceptance, of physical intimacy. “Halal dating” is the cover we give to this performance, and any intimacy must be confined to the private sphere, never to be talked about. It drives young couples to be shamed for simply holding hands in public, and, speaking as a formerly young person, it often forces them into dangerous situations and spaces merely to engage in any kind of consensual affection. Similarly, the contestants on the show were expected to date without showing actual desire or vulnerability. The entire thing was akin to a typical Pakistani rishta situation. While the show was rightfully mocked on social media for its cringe moments, for more regular viewers, the overwhelming feeling was one of discomfort because of its parallels to real life.

While it would be easy to dismiss the contestants as hypocrites, it is also true that, within the parameters of the show, they found themselves in a strange liminal space – too shameful for wider society, while being too prudish for much of the show’s audience. This wider context is important, because even before the first episode aired on 29 September 2025, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) was forced to issue a clarification after receiving numerous complaints against the show. Pemra noted that they did not have regulatory jurisdiction over Lazawal Ishq because it was not being broadcast on electronic media, and was only streamed on YouTube. By mid-October, a petition was filed against the show in the Islamabad High Court for “promoting obscene and immoral content” by the chairperson of the Aman Taraqqi Party. In December, the morals of the nation were finally restored when the show was geo-blocked halfway through its run. The show was still available elsewhere of course, and to anyone able and willing to use a VPN inside Pakistan.

It’s not hard to track the impact of this censorship. A quick analysis of the average views of the first 50 episodes, until 5 December, shows an average of 220,256 views on YouTube, while the next 50 episodes after the Pakistan-specific ban averaged at 52,535 views per episode. While some viewership had tapered off mid-season, the last episode before the ban garnered 131,212 views compared to 58,535 for the episode right after.

Censorship in Lazawal Ishq, however, was not only exercised by the state; much of it was also self-imposed. The performance aspect of the contestants’ actions on the show became even more fascinating when the first episodes of the show started airing around the 70th episode mark, while the contestants were still shooting the show. Suddenly, they were confronted with how they were being perceived by their audience, and their behaviour on the show adjusted in reaction. For example, contestants’ attitudes dramatically shifted when they realised that the audience had identified an early villain: contestant Fatima Jinnah. Unbeknownst to them, the audience would later watch them react to their reaction, and by that time, they had all been the villain at some point in the unfolding of the show. They dug themselves into a hole by reacting to dated audience perceptions and ganging up to eliminate Fatima, and in so doing, made her much more sympathetic to the audience than she had been before the pile-on. The show became particularly surreal when Tabassum, the last entrant, came in having seen the first week’s episodes. Upon entering the villa, he was recognising people, asking some contestants about discarded partners, and so became the audience’s surrogate.

The contestants’ self-policing is particularly noteworthy when it comes to women’s clothing on the show, and again, standards shift like sand. We learn that dresses are acceptable, but some hem lengths are not. The women on the show are policed for being too desirable, and castigated for not being desirable enough. Women also policed other women. In one instance, the contestant Urooj advises her supposed friend Batool after a fight between Batool and her “partner” Sheraz over the way Batool dresses. Urooj claims pride over the fact that she solicits her partner, Hamza’s, approval for every outfit she wears – treading the fine line between modest and modern that is just right for the villa, and the imagined audience outside it. Batool is then repeatedly shamed into compliance by her partner and the rest of the house, well before the audience and society ever could.

A key aspect of reality television is the audience. Reductive understandings of reality television often posit its appeal as voyeuristic, because it allows the audience space to judge and feel superior in contrast to the contestants. While there is an element of that, as a recent BBC article explores, reality television also serves to expose audiences to perspectives outside their own. Reality television ends up being more diverse than other media we consume, often cutting across class.

While there isn’t enough of a sample size of reality television in Pakistan to make similar comparisons, there is something revelatory about watching nearly 146 hours’ worth of footage of people living inside a villa. This was particularly true of the editing and production choices of Lazawal Ishq. When friends asked me if they should start watching the show, I was genuinely at a loss as to how to respond. The show is not good by most standards; the editing and production style often render it unwatchable. The episodes are painfully long. The unexpected boon of this minimal editing style, however, is that it makes it feel less curated and scripted; the audience is dropped into conversations with little priming. After watching the entire show, I can say I walked away having understood these complete strangers better than I know some friends, often for the worse.

The panoptic nature of reality television is well-known; reality television thrives on surveillance logics to elicit drama, and explores interpersonal tensions under a magnifying glass. All over the world, reality show contestants have stated that they were often underfed and plied with alcohol in order to perform on-screen. One could see a similar model play out during Lazawal Ishq. It was obvious from the numerous fights over food that the contestants were severely underfed, ostensibly because hungry and cranky contestants make for good drama. They were contracted to shoot three episodes per day, each amounting to one and a half hours, during the course of just over a month. Particularly in Pakistan, where reality television is not a developed genre, many contestants might not have known how to advocate for themselves. That is not to excuse much of the behaviour on the show, but to contextualise the contestants as workers and performers, rather than just people finding love. It was obvious that an overwhelming majority of the contestants were working models and aspiring actors looking for their break. Subsequently, viewers started to recognise many of them on their screens; most prominently, Aisha, the eventual winner of the show, had a small role on the hit TV drama Case No. 9.

The audience of the show, despite having no formal role such as voting for contestants, was not passive. Communities of fans/haters formed around the show. The contestants of Lazawal Ishq are extremely accessible on social media, and hypersensitive to audience reaction. Since the show did not actually air on television and was streamed on YouTube, the comment section was the first place to gauge the pulse of the audience, especially if you wanted to know who the most hated person of the week was, ranging from Fatima to Sheeraz, Maaz, Junaid, Tuba, Urooj, Laiba, and everyone else in between. There was a far more dedicated group of viewers who flocked to the subreddit where they discussed topics such as mental health and the blatant misogyny on the show. The community banded together at certain moments, particularly when they saw Jannat being bullied on the show. Some members of the subreddit even mobilised to cancel her primary bullies, such as by lobbying the organisers of a concert to remove Maaz, a contestant/aspiring singer/model, from their performance line-up.

A substantial audience also coalesced on Instagram, making fan edits as well as compilations highlighting the hypocrisy of the contestants. Instagram was a space where the contestants engaged and attempted to parlay a wider audience through the show. They regularly did Instagram lives, answering audience questions, and soon encountered that some sections of the audience were looking for accountability, and asking uncomfortable questions during sessions. The subreddit was filled with posts about getting blocked by Tuba, a contestant who was particularly abusive towards other contestants and critical audience members, as a badge of honour. The fans - and loosely hate-watchers - were alarmed by contestants’ behaviour in and outside the show, perhaps because the contestants were not media-trained in the slightest. Many of them, for example, openly admitted to farming followers through controversies.

Given the dearth of reality shows in Pakistan, with the exception of cult classics like Living on the Edge, the audience-show nexus was unique to Lazawal Ishq. Some contestants seemed genuinely taken aback by the audience reaction, urging viewers to take everything they see with a pinch of salt. They later shared that much of what we saw was scripted, which might be both true and a copout. However, what the audience saw hit close to home, and their(/our) visceral reaction to bullying, policing and blatant misogyny was understandable. Reality television feigns authenticity to mine our attention, but when the “reality”, meant to be consumed as entertainment, causes real-world harm, it’s difficult not to have a reaction. When the audience saw the men on the show demand a default adherence to gender roles, such as the insistence that food be prepared by the women contestants, it became challenging to consume the show purely as brainrot.

Lost in all this drama was the ishq. The show promised to answer the question of what it means to publicly love in a society that polices all forms of affection and bodily autonomy. What we got instead was a juvenile understanding of love. The couple that was shamed for that kiss on the cheek, Mir Hamza and Mehmoona, staged marriage proposals to one another within two days of knowing each other, implying that marriage was the logical endpoint of love. Expressing love and affection – platonic, romantic, heterosexual or queer – is often coded as embarrassing when it takes place before the glare of cameras. The response of this reality show to that possibility was to render love into a performance, devoid of real vulnerability, to reduce the risk of mockery or meme‑ification.

None of the couples on the show lasted outside of it. However, many found friendship. As evidenced on social media, several contestants continue to hang out often, and even collaborate on Instagram reels. When Urooj, one half of a frontrunner couple, threatened to release non-consensual videos of another female contestant on a heated Instagram live days before the finale, audience members rallied behind the person who was targeted. They advocated for her safety and right to privacy, genuinely extending support. Immediately after the finale, the subreddit was flooded with emotional messages from regular contributors sharing how much they will miss the fan community. The show, while formatted around heterosexual, individualised love, kept slipping into the collective.

By the end of the show, the subversive possibilities I initially expected, though, had completely dissipated. I castigated myself for holding onto naive hope that popular culture would reflect feminist imaginations of love and desire. I had sought out women on the show who dissented to the toxic culture prevalent in the villa, only for the same contestants to disappoint me later by upholding patriarchal norms. Sometimes the women would assert their independence or show solidarity with one another, often referring to “girlhood” as a sort of moral code for supporting women. But their larger actions never aligned with those brief moments of clarity.

I sat with an emptiness when the show concluded, learning a lesson we learn over and over again - humans are rarely perfect exemplars of abstract moral codes; instead, they are complex and embody contradictions. It might be easier to write a perfectly feminist fictional female character, a trope that is increasingly pervasive in television dramas expounding “social issues”, but perhaps it is far more interesting to see flawed ones navigating the reality of being a woman in Pakistan, leveraging power dynamics and imperfectly striking patriarchal bargains. The show became more legible when I saw it as a simulation of expectations on women and men in our society, heightened and compressed into 30 days. The misogyny, bullying and compliance to gendered norms were not to be subverted, rather expected. I realised that to expect a show to subvert norms around dating and gender roles, one would have to create an entirely different simulation, one completely divorced from reality.