AlRawabi School for Girls

This is a well acted and well paced series that makes us take a deeper look at what it means to be a woman in any society. Yes, we have seen the premise before, but we also all seen romance movies and will still watch them.

I noticed a lot of low rating stating that the plot of is series is American and never happens to Arabic girls, but I find it hard to believe that young Arabic girls are never mean to other girls. Sounds like people being overly defensive instead of wanting to acknowledge a potential problem.

These types of stories need to be told and this series does a great job of bringing something serious to light.

This story is like Mean Girls whereby a group of popular girls bully other girls but with a Jordanian flavor. After they beat a girl unconscious, she devises a plan for revenge. She gets a couple of friends to go help her with her plan.

One thing that is interesting is the attitudes towards women and girls. One girl is beaten up by her father, and no one raises any concern or objection. Oh, your dad punched you in the face. Teachers see a girl with obvious facial bruises and act as if nothing happened. Then one girl is harassed by an old man, and the teacher scolds the girl as if it's her fault for walking around showing all that skin.

The girls gossip and talk about Zac Efron. One girl has a bedroom that is like entirely pink. You start to feel like it's almost a western society, and then the crazy comes. The final revenge is unbelievably intense so shocking so insane.

This 6-episode series is a solid production from Jordan. I like to point my opinion in specific points if you bear with me 1- Its main case (and almost all cast) are females, which is something new to Jordan and even Arabic drama.

2- The music/songs in the series are pretty solid, seem to come from different accents. I didn't like it though when Liann was lip-singing to a well-known Arabic song for 3 minutes in Ep 3 or 4. Just felt very unauthentic. Otherwise music was superior.

3- The acting was mostly well-done, you could feel the expressions of pain/anger/joy on their faces are mostly real. Occasionally though you could feel it was amateurish.

4- The accent used was the "modern" Arabic spoken in Jordan, claimed to be one spoken by the wealthy even though I don't think that's true. However it's a dialect that the cast and producer probably felt more comfortable using but it's why other reviewers were disappointed calling this series a poor representative of the authentic traditional Jordanian accent.

5- the series focus on toxic relationships between students and bullying. I don't remember this being portrayed in Arab series before despite it happening in all Jordanian schools I know of (happened in my school and every Jordanian friend of mine in other schools).

6- There are some subtle feminist messages - it's not shameful to talk about your period, how women get degraded for being in love, "the honor" of a girl being permanently lost for sending a slightly inappropriate picture. I like how subtle but important these messages were.

I understand if others didn't like the series as much as I did. Possibly other men won't relate to it as much. But the ones who gave it a "1" are Jordanians triggered by a strong female cast, the discussion of tabooed topics, girls not being dressed very conservatively, the modern Jordanian accent....etc. The themes that this series focuses on are very widespread in Jordanian schools and in the society. Tina Shomali tried to avoid controversial scenes (no kissing) or language (no heavy swearing) in order to not distract from the main focus of the series.

Overall I think she and the crew did a great job.

Finally an Arabic series with Hollywood standards,..more pls.

An exceptional piece of storytelling, this mini-series delves into the grim realities of bullying and the pervasive influence of abusive authority figures on school-aged girls in Jordan. It sheds light on the experiences of girls navigating a deeply sexist and misogynistic society, where fear of violence and familial retribution is commonplace. From objectification to victim-blaming, the show starkly illustrates the myriad challenges faced by young girls. It skillfully unveils the distorted priorities of Jordanian and Middle Eastern societies regarding women's rights, depicting how girls are often broken at home and further fractured in school. Notably, it refrains from using the 'broken glass panel analogy' to caution against mistreating these girls to the point of shattering their spirits.