Stream Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee Ramy

The second season of the 2020 Golden Globe winner Ramy is now available to binge on Showmax.

Season 2 of the groundbreaking show is up for three Emmys this month – Best Actor in a Comedy and Best Director for creator Ramy Youssef, as well as Best Supporting Actor for two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, True Detective), who joins the cast this season as magnetic Sufi imam Sheikh Malik.

The show centres on Ramy Hassan (Youssef), a first generation Egyptian-American in New Jersey, as he tries – and fails repeatedly – to be a good person. 

Youssef says he was surprised by the show’s success. “I felt like we were making something that I was very proud of, but because it was so specific, I really didn’t know how many people it would hit. What surprises me is how many people see themselves in the character of Ramy… The first week after the show came out, I got an email from this guy who was like, ‘I’m an evangelical Christian father of three in Montana, and I am Ramy.’ I was like, ‘Wow! I didn’t know that you would feel that way.’” 

“I get feedback all the time from people who are like, ‘I know this show is about Muslim Arabs, but it reminds me of my Jamaican family, it reminds me of my Jewish family.’ For people to really feel like it’s specific to them when they don’t check any of the demographics on paper, that’s really cool.”

If anything, Ramy’s cultural specificity seems to highlight our commonalities, rather than our differences. “I think people are connecting with a family that has problems that they have,” Youssef reasons. “Problems aren’t really bound to any sort of language or culture. Maybe things have a different name, or a different accent, or a different language, but emotionally, it’s really the same. And I think because we try to lead with our character’s problems, people see themselves in it. So yeah, you have a character like Ramy who’s trying to be a good Muslim, but everyone’s trying to be something… Everyone has this idea of what they wanna be and where they actually are, and everyone has that gap that they’re trying to fill. So a lot of people can relate to that.”

It also helps that the show is a comedy. “To address issues through comedy,” Youssef says, “you don’t have to be right. You don’t have to be factually correct. You don’t have to be politically correct. You just have to be emotionally correct.” 

Who is this show about?

But if Ramy’s experiences ring true for all kinds of people across the world, there are many for whom the show doesn’t resonate, particularly within the Muslim community. 

In an online conversation between friends and collaborators Ramy and Mahershala, hosted by the show’s parent network, Hulu, Youssef says, “I think a lot about the various Muslim communities that are going to watch this. There are definitely some people who are like, ‘Oh yeah, I get that. These are conversations we can be having.’ And then there are others who see it and are very upset, and I actually sometimes think rightfully so. When we talk about representation, what’s really difficult about it is that the audience, especially an audience like ours, which is a very varied and very diverse audience, is inherently in an unfair position, because basically there’s been no attempt to show Muslim characters in any vein outside of you know, the bombs going off…”

“…And never from their point of view,” Ali interjects. 

“Not even trying,” Youssef agrees. 

“So we are as an audience in a very unfair position, because there’s this scarcity. And then marketing comes along, and then hype comes along, and they go, ‘Yo, Muslims’ – they don’t even know who they’re talking to, it’s just like ‘Muslims’ – ‘we have a show for you! You’re like, represented! Check it out, it’s you!’ And then you watch the show…” Youssef laughs, “and you’re like, ‘This is a show about an Arab who jerks off too much… That’s not me!’ Like, it’s so clear that you can’t put this entire group into this idea. But that’s what happens.”

Ramy has been described by Middle East Eye as “an economically-challenged man-child, suffering from a spiritual vacuum that he persistently tries to fill with sex” while The Guardian called out his “amenable but pathological defiance of personal responsibility, his well-meaning and winsome brew of good intentions and self-obsession.”

And yet, it turns out, both viewers and the critics are finding this deeply flawed character, painted up-close with touching honesty, remarkably good company.

“With the show, we always want people to feel less lonely,” says Youssef. “The most exciting way to do that is to show the ugly things that we try to hide.”

The awards tally

Ramy was recently renewed for a third season, having already won the 2020 Best Actor Golden Globe for Youssef, the Audience Award at SXSW 2019, and a 2020 Peabody Award, where the jurors praised the show as “ground-breaking” and “masterful”, describing it as a “touching, thoughtful, and very funny sitcom” about “the tension between faith and secularism, East and West, and men and women.” 

Ramy has also been nominated for both this year’s Black Reel Awards (Ali) and Critics Choice Awards (Youssef), while Season 2 is currently at #24 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the Best TV of 2020 So Far, with a 97% critics rating. 

“Ramy is an autobiographical, lyrical landmark,” says Vanity Fair, calling it “vulnerable, searching, and deeply surprising,” while Los Angeles Times says, “Season 2 is moving and profane. Stupid funny, then scary serious. Topical and evergreen. Hyper-specific, with wide appeal.”

As Rolling Stone put it, “There is no other show quite like Ramy, because there is no other character quite like Ramy… Superb.”