By BRIAN STELTER


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Ramadan is a holy month of praying and fasting, and for television executives it is a bonanza.

With ample time for family television viewing, pan-Arab channels save their best shows for Ramadan. In recent years none of the offerings have captured the collective imagination in quite the same way as “Freej,” the region’s first 3-D animated series.

The show finds humor along the dominant fault line of this city: the tension between old and new. It focuses on four secluded and sometimes stubborn grandmothers.

Its creator, the 31-year-old Mohammed Saeed Harib, is trying to expand “Freej” into a worldwide brand while maintaining its popularity here in Dubai, where viewers adore the four grandmothers who star in the 15-minute episodes. But the recession is not making it easy.

“Freej,” which swiftly became one of the most popular shows in the United Arab Emirates when it had its premiere here three years ago, is on a hiatus this Ramadan season, a result of the declining economy and, Mr. Harib says, his exhaustion after three grueling production cycles. In its place a new series of three-minute episodes starring the characters is being shown on local television.

Mr. Harib’s animated aspirations took shape a decade ago when he studied at Northeastern University in Boston, where his peers downloaded American cartoons in their dormitories. He recognized that his native emirate lacked homegrown characters and superheroes. “We don’t come from a land that has a lot of role models, except for C.E.O.’s and sheiks,” he said in an interview.

At Northeastern Mr. Harib started to sketch his first character, later named Um Saeed, a wise, petite lady in red who often leads the grandmas’ conversations. The cartoon he envisioned would extol grandmas as role models. Mr. Harib said that he imagined that the veil that partly covered a woman’s face would be the “costume of the superhero.”

The show tackles hot topics like wedding traditions and bribery in a distinctly Arab way, sometimes merely hinting at issues.

Mr. Harib hopes to make a “Freej” movie. To get there, he said his characters need to be dubbed into English. Already he has had one episode dubbed into Italian.

If “animation exports the cultural values of the nation,” as Mr. Harib put it, then he said he wanted “Freej” to continue to represent his native Gulf state.

“We are a minority in this country,” Mr. Harib said, referring to the fact that expatriates make up most of Dubai’s population. “We really need to sustain who we are.”


“Freej” is one of the most popular shows in Dubai.