Towards the end of the third season of Amazon Prime Video’s Panchayat, one can tell the exact moment when show runners restrained themselves from getting “too political”, or when notes by Amazon Prime Video’s executives, to tone things down a notch, were implemented.
It’s when a few masked assailants on a bike show up to kill a primary character in the show, and they end up missing from even close range. The shooters don’t exhibit the clumsiness of a novice (like, say, in Gangs of Wasseypur) and the background score keeps flitting between comedic and sombre. The final result is a scene that seems to be struggling to be authentic to reach its organic conclusion, while constantly being tugged from behind by streaming executives and crumbling under the pressures of keeping the ‘light’ touch of its first season.
Following the Tandav fiasco, most shows (especially on Amazon Prime Video) have been careful about how much socio-political commentary is allowed without getting into the crosshairs of the many troll armies on social media. It’s an impossible expectation, given that most good shows must out-grow their previous selves. Directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra, Panchayat Season 3 is still extremely easy to watch, but it also seems to be wrestling with itself, shying away at crucial moments.
Picking up where the events in the second season ended, this season begins with Phulera’s secretary, Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar), battling between his final few weeks of MBA preparation and the loyalty he feels towards the village he’s been transferred from, courtesy the clout of the local politician (Pankaj Jha).
Phulera’s secretary, Abhishek. Screengrab from video.
Both the Pradhanpati (Raghubir Yadav) and Vikas (Chandan Roy) won’t allow Abhishek’s replacement to complete his joining formalities, hoping to overturn the transfer order. Prahlad (Faisal Malik) is still stewing in the anger of losing his son, dowsing his days and nights in alcohol. There’s a budding romance between Abhishek and Rinki, the Pradhan’s daughter, taking place over WhatsApp voice notes. The Pradhan’s rivals – Bhushan (Durgesh Kumar), his wife Kranti Devi (Sunita Rajwar) – can be seen sharpening their knives, waiting to pounce on the first mistake made by the current establishment of Phulera.
Having begun as compactly-written and dispassionately-observed vignettes of village life through the eyes of a city-bred man in its first season, it was only in the second season that the makers of Panchayat allowed ‘real life’ to seep into its idealistic setting. We first got a sense of the show expanding its horizons when the show’s loveable “heroes” are shown bullying Bhushan and his wife – their arrival onto every scene being marked with a ‘villainous’ background score. Pankaj as the corrupt, foul-mouthed and potentially violent vidhayak of the region is the show’s main antagonist, straight out of a Prakash Jha film. Henchmen guard him with machine guns in hand and he demands apologies from those he has blatantly aggrieved and humiliated.
The intimidating local goon doubling up as a politician is much too stereotypical and I wish there were more surprises to him. Similarly, the character of Bhushan and his wife Kranti Devi – are the scheming, jealous type. Their lackey in the show – Binod (a scene-stealing Ashok Pathak in the second season) is reduced to being just that. He merely echoes Bhushan’s sentiments or exists for a clever, funny rejoinder at the end of a scene. Playing an oppressed person in the village, who has to wait for years for a toilet and a decent road, Binod’s lack of richness as a character is one of the biggest failings of this season.
Pradhan, after having been front and centre through the first two seasons, becomes a relatively passive character in this season. Raghubir Yadav, who stole the show as the endearing father-figure, who helps maintain the santulan (equilibrium) of the status-quo within the village, is seen with more grey shades here. A track in the show explores him allocating houses under a welfare scheme to his part of the village, as against the other. Neena Gupta as the actual Pradhan of the village, who compensates for her husband’s blunders with tactfulness, appears too polished for the show’s rustic setting. Even though it has nothing to do with Gupta’s performance per se, I could never quite look beyond the fact that she was play-acting her part rather than being.
Still from Panchayat. Screengrab from video.
Chandan Roy’s Vikas is one of the most earnest characters written in a Hindi streaming show, with a performance that has a similar light touch. He remains pretty much the same through a majority of the third season, still owning one of the best frowns on Indian screens. We also witness Faisal Malik’s greatness as an actor each time Prahlad breaks into his warm smile, especially in a season that requires him to be gloomy and grieving. He delivers the best line of the show – “Waqt (se) pehle koi nahi jaayega” – when he’s told that Abhishek’s term is about to end in a few months.
Panchayat S03 delves into the muck of Indian bureaucracy, where politics and accountability are horribly intertwined, and yet, rarely found in the same place. The welfare scheme track sacrifices sharp observation in favour of a teary catharsis. A villagers’ uprising against the local politician seems to be torn between balancing humour and dialling up social commentary. One of the oddest scenes in the show is when two groups violently clash outside a hospital. The makers no longer know if they’re making a comedy or a social drama, and that indecisiveness spills over to the bipolar choices in the score that alternates between “funny” and “intense”. When the moment arrives, the show doesn’t have the courage to kill a primary character. Instead, it does something that most films and shows seem to be doing these days – it hints at what the next instalment will carry. It lays bare the dishonesty at the heart of such initiatives these days. The “issue” is only as important as long as it keeps the assembly line running.
*All episodes of Panchayat S03 are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
