After a super Season 1, we had a mediocre Season 2 and a ho-hum third season. This time (and mind you, there are more seasons to come!), almost the entire Panchayat 4 is about election times and the rivalry between the Manju Devi (Neena Gupta) camp and Kranti Devi (Sunita Rajwar) and all the perfidy and machinations that go with these games.
The village of Phulera has always had one standout advantage, so to speak: that is, the series based around it has been studded with solid actors who lift the script fabulously: Neena Gupta and Sunita Rajwar are so much into their determined and scheming characters that it is difficult to believe that they are merely actors enacting these roles. Raghubir Yadav is so much the Pradhan and Faisal Malik is the perfect Prahlad. Chandan Roy (not Sanyal!) is Vikas Shukla incarnate, while Durgesh Kumar as ‘Banrakas’ is absolutely magnificent.
Jitendra Kumar as the sachiv (secretary) has now become so much his character that it will be difficult for us to imagine him in any other character on screen! A welcome new addition is Ram Gopal Bajaj as Manju Devi’s father. Complete delights are Pankaj Jha as MLA Chandra Kishore, Sanvikaa as Rinki, Tripti Sahu as Khushboo, Ashok Pathak as Binod and Gaurav Singh as Chuttan.
I mention them all simply to demonstrate that these actors allow the viewer to cover up and help us gloss over the inadequacies if any in the script and make us enjoy the proceedings even when the written word (Chandan Kumar) could have been better, sharper, less stereotyped and more riveting. The new director (Akshat Vijaywargiya) shows promise and one hopes that the next season will not mere a mere follow-up-and-cash-in-on-something-that-has-worked-somehow and contains meat enough.
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Panchayat 4 could have scored a ‘four’. Here’s fervently hoping that Season 5 scores a sixer.
Rating: **1/2
Amazon Prime Video presents The Viral Fever’s Panchayat 4 Directed by: Deepak Kumar Mishra & Akshat Vijaywargiya Written by: Chandan Kumar Music: Anurag Saikia Starring: Jitendra Kumar, Raghubir Yadav, Neena Gupta, Chandan Roy, Faisal Malik, Durgesh Kumar, Sunita Rajwar, Pankaj Jha, Ram Gopal Bajaj, Sanvikaa, Tripti Sahu, Ashok Pathak, Swanand Kirkire, Gaurav Singh, Gullu Kumar & others