The Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan is my favourite hotel in the world. Perched on the rocks overlooking the River Nile, it offers blissful views of feluccas drifting slowly by and hints of the desert beyond. Not surprisingly, it has featured in a number of novels and films, notably Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Christie stayed there herself and was enchanted, as many other celebrated visitors have been. And in the Netflix series Secret of the Nile, the hotel takes centre stage, under the name Grand Hotel, rather as Highclere Castle plays the part of Downton Abbey in that cult British TV series. Indeed, in many ways Secret of the Nile is a sort of Downton Abbey transferred to Upper Egypt around the year 1950, as the glamorous world of the owners and guests by necessity interacts with that of the servants, while on the surface strict class distinctions are maintained.
However, Secret of the Nile (called Grand Hotel in its Arabic original) has some deeply sinister plot lines and most of its characters are seriously flawed. Indeed, at least three of them could be described as evil. All the seven deadly sins are present, envy and greed being the most obvious. But it is not just the main story line (plus its many tributaries) that takes unexpected twists and turns. So does one’s attitude to individual characters, as suddenly they seem not quite as nice or quite as nasty as one originally thought. Deceit is a constant thread, much of it calculated, some spontaneous, while as a form of light relief malicious gossip offers a titillating accompaniment.
The series — 30 45-minute episodes — begins when a young man (Amr Youssef) arrives at the hotel under a false identity in order to find out what has happened to his sister, who worked there as a maid but who has disappeared. It soon becomes clear that the answer involves all sorts of unexpected, troubling elements; behind their elegant facade, the family who own and run the hotel are rotten to the core, with one notable exception (Amina Khalil). The newcomer strikes up a friendship with a seriously overweight, simple but kind-hearted waiter (brilliantly portrayed by Mohamed Mamdouh) and this unlikely pair gradually uncover, wittingly or otherwise, not just one secret but the many secrets of the Grand Hotel on the Nile. Some of them are very unpleasant indeed, but all taking place in an exquisite physical setting, as well as in the rather overblown fin de siècle interiors of the hotel and among the sumptuous clothes of the elite clientele. The series (in Arabic, with English subtitles) is quite addictive and visually splendid. Not for nothing did the Egyptians conquer the Arab world’s TV and cinema.
Jonathan Fryer 