CAST: Jitendra Kumar, Raghubir Yadav, Neena Gupta,  Sanvikaa, Faisal Malik, and Chandan Roy

DIRECTED BY: Deepak Kumar Mishra

Panchayat takes the audience through the hilarious and tumultuous journey of Abhishek. After facing several hardships in adjusting to the new life and routine in the village of Phulera, Abhishek, aka, Kumar has now finally settled in the life of Phulera. The series slowly unfolds the equation between a handful of colourful characters.

The first season of Panchayat, with eight episodes, focused on the fresh-out-of-college Abhishek Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar). His government job takes him to a small Uttar Pradesh village Phulera as Panchayat Sachiv. The city boy struggles to settle in a village with its drastic change of pace, power cuts and a different socio-economic reality. He focuses his attention on passing CAT exam so that he could flee Phulera. In his journey, he is joined by Pradhanji (Raghubir Yadav), his wife Manju Devi (Neena Gupta), who is the real pradhan, gram sevak Vikas (Chandan Roy) and up-pradhan Prahlad (Faisal Malik). All of them together make his life easier, and by the eighth episode, Abhishek is finally settling in at Phulera..

Taking on from the first season, the series delves deeper into the equation between Pradhan, Vikas, Prahlad and Manju Devi along with Abhishek.

As the characters navigate through the complexities in the village, a new opposition enters Phulera and is set to cause havoc in their lives.

Like the first season, this season too rests on the little pursuits and dilemmas of Phulera village, mildly spiced with satire, a deadpan humour and winning performances. Like the first season, this season too steers clear of deep-diving into the bigger issues of rural India like caste, economic disparity, corruption and political bullying, and keeps its focus on the dynamics among its primary characters.

A CCTV installation bang in the middle of the village square leads to unforeseen requests such as finding out the culprit behind a sandal swap and the whereabouts of a goat. The humour in these scenes is light and warm.

Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar) who was looking for ways to flee Phulera by appearing for an exam, is more invested and much more attuned to the ways of Phulera in this season. The character of Manju Devi (Neena Gupta), the village sarpanch too is better fleshed out, although she still isn’t as empowered when the series begins. Her husband, Brij Bhushan (Raghubir Yadav) is still calling the shots as the proxy sarpanch.

Manju Devi and her gang of women manage to stand up against the corrupt local MLA and that is her empowering event.. But Manju Devi’s predicaments are largely domestic, barring a petty rivalry that emerges with a couple who wants to usurp Manju and Brij Bhushan’s power as sarpanch.

Manju wants to get their daughter Rinky (Sanvikaa) married to a suitable boy with a job in the big city, but Rinky has other interests—a romance is simmering between Abhishek and Rinky, but neither has the courage to admit it.

Abhishek has established a friendship with his assistant Vikas (Chandan Roy) and Manju Devi’s deputy, Prahlad (Faisal Malik). The camaraderie among the four men—Abhishek, Jitendra, Vikas and Prahlad—is fully realised when tragedy strikes Prahlad. Abhishek, who has no plans of bringing about big changes in the village, but is only bound by duty and doesn’t want to be reprimanded by his senior. He looks into the matter of open defecation only when he is alerted about a ‘surprise’ inspection. Jitendra Kumar as Abhishek is brilliant. He portrays the frustration of an aspiring youth stuck in the wrong place and the concerns of a goodhearted human, in equal amounts.

The performances really hold the show together. Jitendra Kumar’s transition from a man uncomfortable with where he was in the first season—he even had to fight for the chair he is allotted as secretary to the panchayat in one of the first season’s best episodes—to being part of Phulera’s own is seamless.

His friend Sidharth (Satish Ray), who has was a personification of Abhishek’s desire to rise above his circumstances and appear for the management exam, visits him for rural experience of his own. Gupta and Yadav keep their conflicts and chemistry afloat effectively—both characters have more elaborate graphs and their performances are the heart of this season.

Through an exquisite grip on the story, writer Chandan Kumar and director Deepak Kumar Mishra’s subtle handling of the lives of inhabitants of Phulera very much propels the lived-in feel of the show.The creators of Panchayat 2 have projected Indian hinterland like nothing we are accustomed to see on screen. It’s a village dealing with relevant issues like open defecation, alcohol addiction and installation of CCTVs, but with a dash of humour.

As a story of rural manners, with a gentle comedic and satirical lens on complacency and cowardice, told at a leisurely pace and staying firmly on course as a drama that derives its grist from trivial pursuits, Panchayat 2 is triumphant.Besides Jitendra, the entire cast, including actors Chandan Roy, Faisal Malik, Sunita Rajwar, Durgesh Kumar, and Shrikant Verma, has taken a well-written, crisp, and a simple yet charming script, a notch higher with their towering performances.