Sometimes one feels the universe has run out of script and is improvising, brashly, recycling material from sitcoms. Politics everywhere runs without a script, but ours crossed over long ago into zebras with trunks, elephants with as many limbs as tarantulas, and abusive bunny rabbits.

The series that fits this country's history, and my lived experience, like a glove is The Good Place. Spoiler alert: if you've always meant to watch it but never had the time, here is your chance. Stop reading, go watch it, then come back. As the rest of this piece will prove, neither it nor I are going anywhere.

For everyone else, a quick summary. Eleanor Shellstrop is a selfish, ordinary woman who dies and wakes up in 'The Good Place', a pastel, utopian afterlife. The architect, Michael, welcomes her, but Eleanor realises she was mistaken for a saintly human rights lawyer. To avoid 'The Bad Place', she begs her assigned soulmate, an anxious ethics professor named Chidi, to secretly teach her how to be good. They're joined by Tahani, a condescending wealthy socialite, and Jason, a silent monk who is actually a clueless DJ from Florida, also sent there by mistake. In the finale, Eleanor realises the truth: this is the Bad Place, an experimental torture chamber built on psychological torment rather than fire and brimstone. Trying to hide the fact that they're imposters, the four humans organically, perfectly, keep ruining each other's peace, over and over, for a long time. Whenever one starts feeling safe, things fall apart and the torture resumes.

Watch this same play run at home, across the border, and on the world stage, in that order. Now Pakistan. How........

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