Even in its fourth outing, ‘Panchayat’ still feels as warm and familiar as ever. If anything, it seems to have settled deeper into its skin—less eager to impress, more at ease with itself. Phulera, once a curious little village with eccentric characters, now feels like a second home. This season, the drama revolves around elections. The stakes may be small, but the egos are anything but. Whether it’s luring voters with aaloo or dangling samosas like currency, the tussle between Manju Devi and Kranti Devi’s camps is both hilarious and unsettling. The humour is sharper, the satire more pointed—and that’s where the show finds its magic. The beauty lies in the tiny chaos of it all.
Abhishek’s crisis and dilemmas
Abhishek Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar) returns, still the reluctant outsider caught in the web of rural politics. He’s reeling from the aftermath of last season’s slap—now turned into an FIR that threatens his CAT prospects. He shows up at Bhushan’s (Durgesh Kumar) house, drunk and apologetic, but Phulera doesn’t let go that easily. His apology is accepted, but with strings attached. The show smartly resumes without a pause, leaning into Abhishek’s spiralling worries with a mix of humour and heaviness. Around him, Pradhan and Manju Devi are locked in a quiet anxiety about their political future, while Prahlad and Vikas play both sidekicks and emotional anchors. A new subplot involving a local MP nudging Prahlad into the upcoming MLA election adds intrigue without disrupting the core rhythm.
A shift in structure
This season switches gears narratively. Unlike the earlier arcs that had clearer trajectories, this one flows like a set of loosely connected vignettes. It’s less about destination and more about mood. That approach mostly works—because by now, we aren’t just watching for the plot. We’re here for the silences between characters, for those unspoken glances, for the way they share space. There are occasional slips—a track involving Manju Devi’s father meanders without landing any emotional or comic payoff—but just when the pace feels sluggish, the show redeems itself with an election-day episode brimming with energy and sharp writing.
Characters hold everything together
What holds it all together, as always, is the cast. Faisal Malik’s Prahlad continues to be the emotional pulse of the show, conveying grief, loyalty, and weariness with heart-breaking restraint. Chandan Roy is once again terrific as Vikas—jovial, loyal, and sneakily funny. Raghubir Yadav and Neena Gupta bring their usual grace, while even the so-called troublemakers—Bhushan (Durgesh Kumar), Binod (Ashok Pathak), Madhav (Bulloo Kumar)—are written with empathy. They aren’t villains, just men shaped by pride, loyalty, and the quiet codes of village life. One scene, where Binod refuses to jump camps out of sheer principle, lands not because it’s dramatic—but because it’s so quietly honest.
Finding meaning in the mundane
In the end, ‘Panchayat’ proves what it has always believed—that the ordinary holds more meaning than we think. Some of its finest moments this season happen when nothing much is happening at all. Four men around a fire with beer bottles, no dialogue of note, just the silence of shared exhaustion. That’s the soul of the show. It’s not trying to go big or loud. It just wants to reflect a world that exists in pauses, in side glances, and in unsaid things. Four seasons in, ‘Panchayat’ still knows how to stay small—and that’s what makes it so large in its impact.
Cast: Jitendra Kumar, Raghubir Yadav, Neena Gupta, Faisal Malik, Chandan Roy, Durgesh Kumar, and Ashok Pathak
Director: Deepak Kumar Mishra
Rating: 3.5/5
(‘Panchayat’ Season 4 is streaming on Prime Video)
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