Panchayat - Season 4 - From Samosas to Schemes

Panchayat - Season 4

Hindi - Comedy 

8 Episodes ~ 40 mins

Prime Video

I am pretty certain that by the time this post is live, most of you would have already caught up with the show. Hopefully you will resonate with my sentiments. I am not going into very detailed character backgrounds or plot details, because let us be honest—everyone watches Panchayat!

When Panchayat first premiered just a few days into the 2020 lockdown, it was exactly what we needed: simplicity, calm and comfort. Everything about the show radiated that unhurried charm—the plot, the characters, the actors playing them. Entire episodes revolved around something as simple as a chair with wheels, a stuck door or a haunted tree. Simplicity has always been the show’s USP.

Season 2 built beautifully on that foundation, giving the secondary characters more depth and strengthening our emotional bond with them. The writing was sharp, and the heartbreak at the end made it one of those rare second seasons that actually surpassed the first.

Season 3 started showing signs of fatigue. The plot shifted its attention to Bhushan, Binod, and their crew, pushing Sachivji to the side lines. The brawl towards the end and the impending election gave us a thread to hang on to, albeit with the needlessly dramatic cliffhanger: “Who shot Pradhanji?”

Season 4 picks up with the clear plotline - The Panchayat election. This had so much potential: a chance to explore grassroots politics through that same small-town lens. There was room to craft episodes around everyday conflict. The samosa made using Bhushan’s potatoes and Pradhanji’s maida and oil, or an argument over the last two kachoris. The scope was there. The material was ripe. But it is a slog and much of the content does not land.

I suspect the problem is that the show seems to have started taking itself too seriously. A surprisingly needless focus on the Vidhayak (belting people ??), politics turns abrasive with Kranti Devi spewing venom like a “mother in law” character. 

I get that the writers wanted to flesh out Binod and Madhav’s characters, but they seem to have shed their earlier simplicity. Out of nowhere, they are  politically savvy and talking strategy, which seems like a jarring tonal shift. Meanwhile, Sachivji is reduced to those familiar confused expressions and his slow-burn romance with Rinki barely gets any airtime. We still do not get the definitive answer to the question hanging from Season 3.

That said, the show is still watchable. There are two episodes that still capture some of that original charm—the one where Binod is courted and another featuring Pradhanji’s father-in-law. 

Copyrights to the original owner/poster.

In short, the show’s soul —its simplicity is blown apart. Hopefully the next season is written well and concludes the show definitively. The caption above pretty much sums it up! (credits to the original poster!)