 "'Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam' web-series review: This retelling of TVF and Amazon Prime Video's 'Panchayat' has its heart in the right place")
Cast: Abishek Kumar, Chetan, Devadarshni Chetan, Niyathi, Anand Sami, Paul Raj
Director: Naga
Lanaguage: Tamil
Jitendra Kumar plays Abhishek Tripathi, who lands a job in the Phulera district of Uttar Pradesh as the secretary of the Gram Panchayat. He and his friend, Biswapati Sarkar, have opposite reactions to the news. Once he lands there, he meets a palette of interesting and idiosyncratic characters that prepare us for the misadventures he’s going to experience in his work. Writer Chandan Kumar and director Deepak Kumar Mishra rightly capture the milieu of the state and also the lingo of the characters.
This was the basic crux of TVF and Amazon Prime Video’s Panchayat that dropped on OTT back in 2020, a month after the nation went into lockdown. Four years later, we have had three seasons in Hindi and the first in its Tamil retelling which is titled Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam. This time too, the milieu has the heart in the right place. Ever since the pandemic has begun, and ended, people have been screaming on social media and even from Bollywood how South has retained its essence and tells stories that are rooted.
For Prime Video India and TVF to tell a rooted story in South, taking cues from North, is both interesting and ironic. The performances land because the actors feel they belong to this world and have smelled the stench of struggles. The crux and comic elements are mostly the same, with little jokes here and there. Basically, the idea or the intent of the show to be remade could be to tell people how the basic struggles of aspiring and ambitious men feel, even if they are divided by cultures. Once viewers get a hang of this grim reality of a supposed evolving India, comparisons with the original show will be futile and frivolous.
Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars)
Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video IN
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