Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam Review: This superb Tamil remake of Panchayat is a subversive revisit to the rural utopia

'Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam', the Tamil remake of the popular series 'Panchayat', streams on Amazon Prime Video from September 20.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam, which just dropped on Amazon Prime Video, is a Tamil remake of the uber popular web-series Panchayat. The engaging remake stays faithful to the Hindi original but makes minor, subversive tweaks to the original story to localise it.

For its die-hard fans, the now-three-season-old Prime Video Originals Hindi web-series starring Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta, Raghubir Yadav, among others, is an emotion. Could the same producers, TVF (The Viral Fever), recreate their magic in a different language and landscape? More importantly, can the rural reality of north India/Uttar Pradesh adapt well to the complex sociopolitical landscape of a south Indian/Tamil Nadu village?

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam Season 1 Overview

The solid cast of the no-frills series do a good job of matching the standard set by the original. The makers of the Naga-directed Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam bring on a standup comic to play the lead, Siddharth. That is a smart choice to create a tragicomic character to show a victim of his circumstances. While Jitendra Kumar became a national sensation with the series and went on to play Jeetu bhaiyya-type roles in other series, a brooding Abishek Kumar in the Tamil version brings a fresh take to Jitendra's 'angry young man trapped in his circumstances' role. Abishek Kumar does a decent job as an Everyman urban engineering graduate who reluctantly becomes a village panchayat secretary, amid limited job opportunities in Chennai. Both versions of the series remain feel-good and engaging but the Tamil one stands out in its individuality despite the familiarity.

The storyline of the eight-episode series, with around 30 minutes duration for each episode, is the same. The show of daily struggles, inadequate infrastructure, community camaraderie, as was shown in the Hindi original too, will resonate with viewers. There is a lot of wry humour, at times contrived but mostly, they bring a smile. The minor characters, especially that of Lakshmipati puts up a good performance.

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam Cast: The nepotism brigade

In the Tamil counterpart, the roles played cogently with a stolid calm by Raghubir Yadav and Neena Gupta are being essayed by the real-life actor couple Chetan and Devadarshini as Meenakshi Sundaram and Meenakshi Devi, respectively, or Soundappa and Soundamma, or father and mother of Sound, short for Soundarya, which is played by their real-life daughter Niyathi Kadambi. But it seems like a good decision to cast the real-life couple as the reel-life husband and wife, their natural chemistry comes through. Chetan and Devadarshini are solid actors. Devadarshini's Meenakshi Devi, who can put her signatures on documents, is a departure from Neena Gupta's Manju Devi's worldly wise but unlettered Pradhan who gives thumb prints for signatures. Both Manju Devi and Meenakshi Devi are not 'becharis'. They hold their own. If Manju Devi's lack of participation in the political administration founts from her lack of education and imposter syndrome, Meenakshi Devi's emanates from sheer unwillingness to participate in public life, being content with her home chores. That feels a little at odds but also reflects how girl's education alone cannot win the entire battle for women's emancipation and empowerment, but is a first step. There are more forces at play.

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam Trailer

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam Review: Caste politics

The biggest success of Panchayat, with its slice-of-life depiction of the countryside, was connecting with the Hindi-speaking audiences at a time when Bollywood has abandoned rural India in its storytelling. The likes of Panchayat have tickled our nostalgia of rooted storytelling, from Malgudi Days to Peepli [Live] and more. But the biggest drawback of the series was it perpetuating the problematic and misleading stereotype of rural life as being dominated by Brahmins. It uses humour to portray the injustices and inequalities of the caste system. Panchayat and its characters, with surnames such as Dubey, Tripathi, Pandey and Shukla, live in a Brahminical utopia and is a Savarna creation, as the end credits title card shows: upper-cast crew surnames. Tamil middle cinema, more than any other Indian cinema, with the likes of Pa. Ranjith and Vetrimaaran in recent years, and even in some mainstream cinema that Kamal Haasan once made, have, over the decades, shown how caste colours Tamil life.

Subversion and departures: Where the Tamil remake scores over the Hindi original

While Panchayat betrays its Brahmin sensibilities and the social reality that upper-caste men get government postings and marriage proposals easily. Even if the Secretary seems like a progressive city-bred who encourages the woman Pradhan Manju Devi (Neena Gupta) to eventually realise and stake claim to her post as the village council chairperson, or maybe he does it to not be suspended, Abhishek Tripathi's caste is writ large from the first sequence. Her husband Brij Bhushan Dubey thinks Jitendra's Secretary/Sachiv ji can be a good match for their daughter not only because he is a progressive city-bred who sees taking dowry as wrong but he is also 'from our own caste'. This is where the Tamil remake, as of now, at least in Season 1, scores over its Hindi original. In the Tamil series, Siddharth's surname is not told to the viewers and when he's asked, he displays ignorance. And that becomes a reason why the Brahmin Meenakshi Sundaram (Chetan), who warms up to him like a family, can't see him as a potential match for his daughter just yet.

Another departure is replacing the photographs of Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad in the panchayat office to those of BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru in the Tamil version. Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, stays in both.

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam also subverts the awareness-campaign slogan painting across the village from the two-children policy in the Hindi series to that of menstruation and women's health hygiene in the Tamil remake. While the former signals the 'hum do, humare do' two-child policy of Indian governments, whether in the Indira Gandhi Congress Manifesto of yesteryear to the current two-child policy in states like Assam. The Tamil series ingeniously juxtaposes the coming-of-age ceremony of girls with a menstruation awareness campaign. And to think that 'Padman' Arunachalam Muruganantham, a social entrepreneur and activist who invented a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine and worked to create awareness in rural areas, is from Tamil Nadu.

It is in its departures that the Tamil remake of Panchayat Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam shines. Watch the series, an ode to simple life, laugh along, but also reflect on the deeper issues at play. One has to wait for the subsequent seasons to see how much the Tamil version engages with caste politics.

Star Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam is streaming on Amazon Prime Video