PANCHAYAT - V View Reviews #70

If any audience intended to watch the light-hearted, heartwarming and enjoyable show, Panchayat on Amazon Prime Video is the right place. It is a situational, effortless, comedy-drama series that keeps you engaged till the end. This show takes you far from the gangs, mafia, and violence, and gives you fresh air from a rural village Phulera...depicting its life and people with bittersweet struggles from everyday life. It takes up one issue per episode and tries to solve it.

The plot is simple. It is a journey of an Engineering graduate and a CAT aspirant Abhishek Tripathi. He is unable to find a job of his calibre and ends up working for a Panchayat as it's Sachiv in a remote village named Phulera. When this city boy who has never spent time in the village goes about compromising and adjusting to the circumstances, the storyline becomes very relatable. The beauty of the series lies in the fact that Abhishek is bound by duty and has no plans of bringing about a charismatic change in the rural set-up overnight. It transports you to a simpler time, a life of hand pump, lantern, and mosquito net.

Panchayat to date has two seasons with eight episodes each. The first season aired in 2020 when Abhishek Tripathi comes to the village as Panchayat Sachiv. He struggles to settle in a village with different socio-economic realities, continuous power cuts, no room for him etc. He then firmly decides to study hard and clear his CAT entrance test and flee Phulera. By the second season, he blends with his surroundings and accepts life and is less complaining. He develops a better equation with the village folk. The second season begins exactly where the first one ended. It is the same village, the same actors and the same music with unique obstacles in each episode. By now there is an established firm friendship with Vikas(Chandan Roy), Pradhan pati(Raghuvir Yadav), Pradhan, Manju Devi(Neena Gupta) and Prahalad(Faisal Malik). This season sparks the hope of love with Pinky(Sanvika). In the new season, we have a new antagonist Bhushan(Durgesh Kumar) and his wife Kranti(Sunita Rajwar). All these characters add spices to Abhishek's life raising issues that are small but universal. It raises the mild situational comedy...with no melodrama and no big monologues. It is the last episode that changes the tone of the show and leaves you shattered. As an audience, I was not comfortable with it. The makers could have ended better.... on a positive note. At least they could have named the road after the soldier who laid his life for the country. But, season 3 is in pipeline and they might raise the issue there. The show makes you laugh and cry and successfully connects with the audience.

It is the outstanding writing by Chandan Kumar and the power-packed performance of the cast that made this show so popular. Jitendra Kumar as Abhishek Tripathi is the hero of the masses as he makes his role likeable, relatable and believable. Neena Gupta as Manju Devi, a typical housewife was perfect with her rawness and conviction. Raghuvir Yadav as Pradhan pati steals the show. It is fun watching Neena Gupta and Raghubir Yadav trying to win over each other. Besides these three, Chandan Roy as Vikas manages to make a parallel lead. In his silliness, he is endearing. Faisal Malik as Prahlad has the most emotional lifting in this season. Sanvika as Rinki, Sunita Rajwar as Kranti, and Durgesh Kumar as Bhushan were all brilliant in their respective role.

With good direction by Deepak Kumar Mishra, honest performance by the actors, the crisp writing, the soothing background score, and the good screenplay, Panchayat, is worth watching on Amazon Prime Video.