Since the actors fit their parts perfectly, and everybody gets enough of an opportunity to shine, they have become familiar to viewers.
So along with its relatable, laugh-out-loud content, they are a big reason for the show’s popularity, notes Deepa Gahlot.
It does not happen often that the release date of a Web series gets advanced due to popular demand. The fourth season of the village-based comedy drama Panchayat drops on June 24, a few weeks before it was scheduled.
Produced by The Viral Fever, with its old team still working on the mostly wholesome population of the fictional north Indian village Phulera, Panchayat Season 4 is created by Deepak Kumar Mishra and Chandan Kumar, and directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and Akshat Vijaywargiya.
Actors Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta, Raghubir Yadav, Faisal Malik, Chandan Roy, Sanvikaa, Durgesh Kumar, Sunita Rajwar and Pankaj Jha return for its new season.
In Season One, city-bred Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar), an engineering graduate, had arrived in Phulera, accepting a low-paying job as the panchayat secretary, to get some work experience as he prepared for the MBA entrance exam.
Initially reluctant to get drawn into village life, Abhishek finds a surrogate family with Manju Devi (Neena Gupta), the village sarpanch and her husband Brij Bhushan Dubey (Raghubir Yadav), who is the de facto pradhan, because that’s how it is when women get elected under the quota.
Abhishek has a budding romance with their daughter Rinki (Sanvikaa), which should hopefully move to the next level, since it has been static over three seasons.
He also befriends his colleagues, Prahlad (Faisal Malik), the deputy pradhan, and the office assistant, Vikas (Chandan Roy).
The first season in 2020 was an early entrant in the OTT scenario, which boomed during the COVID lockdown, and was a charming slice-of-life comedy, mining humour from everyday situations — mainly Abhishek’s settling-in problems and getting his head around rural life.
At the end of the second season, two major events took place.
Abhishek was transferred by the vengeful MLA, Chandrakishore Singh (Pankaj Jha) and Prahlad’s soldier son was killed at the battlefront, which devastated the normally cheerful man.
Season 3 picked up from there, with a hilarious first episode, in which the pradhan and Vikas’ pals try to get Abhishek’s transfer cancelled, and prevent the new incumbent from entering the office.
Earlier seasons had established an acrimony between the Dubeys and a rival Bhushan (Durgesh Kumar) and his ambitious wife Kranti Devi (Sunita Rajwar).
In a really funny episode, in Season Two, Kranti had accused Manju of stealing her slippers.
Durgesh has the backing of the wicked MLA (a bit of a stereotype), and in Season 4, the seething hostility is out in the open as Kranti challenges Manju in the forthcoming panchayat elections.
The trailer shows the mayhem that ensues, and the exchange of blows and insults.
Elections on screen invariably have a similar graph, and this might actually detract from the simplicity and unpredictability of the show.
Abhishek cannot remain neutral when the Phulera erupts with election fervour; he is in too deep now, and has to take sides.
He makes the mistake of telling Rinki that in the event her mother loses the election, there will be no point in staying on in Phulera and gets the stink eye from her.
Since the actors fit their parts perfectly, and everybody gets enough of an opportunity to shine, they have become familiar to viewers. So along with its relatable, laugh-out-loud content, they are a big reason for the show’s popularity.
When the world is going to seed, there is still hope alive in Phulera. Maybe the vile winds of politics will not change the essentially innocent and amiable soul of this village.
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
