Panchayat Season 2 review: Winning performances, a must watch!

The second season of the popular web series Panchayat on Amazon Prime Video, have little in terms of action or plot twists. Like the first season, this season too rests on the little pursuits and dilemmas of Phulera village, mildly spiced with satire, a deadpan humour and winning performances.

A CCTV installation bang in the middle of the village square leads to unforeseen requests such as finding out the culprit behind a sandal swap and the whereabouts of a goat. The humour in these scenes is light and warm.

Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar) who was looking for ways to flee Phulera by appearing for an exam, is more invested and much more attuned to the ways of Phulera in this season. The character of Manju Devi (Neena Gupta), the village sarpanch too is better fleshed out, although she still isn't as empowered when the series begins. Her husband, Brij Bhushan (Raghubir Yadav) is still calling the shots as the proxy sarpanch.

An empowering moment arrives when Manju Devi and her gang of women manage to stand up against the corrupt local MLA. But Manju Devi's predicaments are largely domestic, barring a petty rivalry that emerges with a couple who wants to usurp Manju and Brij Bhushan's power as sarpanch.

Manju is hell bent on getting their daughter Rinky (Sanvikaa) married to a suitable boy with a job in the big city, but Rinky has other interests—a romance is on the brew between Abhishek and Rinky, but neither has the wherewithal to admit it in the open.

The performances really hold the show together. Jitendra Kumar's transition from a man uncomfortable with where he was in the first season—he even had to fight for the chair he is allotted as secretary to the panchayat in one of the first season's best episodes—to being part of Phulera's own is seamless.

His friend Sidharth (Satish Ray), who has was a personification of Abhishek's desire to rise above his circumstances and appear for the management exam, visits him for rural experience of his own. Gupta and Yadav keep their conflicts and chemistry afloat effectively—both characters have more elaborate graphs and their performances are the heart of this season.

As a story of rural manners, with a gentle comedic and satirical lens on complacency and cowardice, told at a leisurely pace and staying firmly on course as a drama that derives its grist from trivial pursuits, Panchayat 2 is triumphant.