BEIRUT, Feb 22 — A Syrian prison warden screams at a group of chained, crouching inmates in a harrowing scene from one of several Ramadan television series this year that tackle the era of former ruler Bashar al-Assad.

Talking about Syria’s prisons and the torture, enforced disappearances and executions that took place there was taboo during half a century of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule, but the topics are now fertile ground for creative productions, though not without controversy.