‘Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam’ series review: Familiar delights in this Tamil remake of ‘Panchayat’

Engineering students and their travails have long been fodder for storytellers. A trope perfected by 3 Idiots in Hindi, its iterations have appeared in various forms and languages beginning with Happy Days (2007) in Telugu and VIP (2014) in Tamil to the likes of Koothara (2014) and Oru Vadakkan Selfie (2015) in Malayalam, and continuing to be in vogue through recent blockbusters such as Hridayam (2022) and Premalu (2024).

Into this deluge of engineering tales dropped TVF’s Panchayat, surprisingly managing to stand out. It did so by narrating the story of an engineering graduate working as a Panchayat secretary in rural Uttar Pradesh. That the show appeared on Amazon Prime, a streaming platform with a largely urban subscription base, relatively unfamiliar with Indian heartlands and its goings-on, contributed in no small measure to the show’s popularity.

After debuting in 2020 and having spawned three seasons since, the show now looks to recreate its success in Tamil with Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam. Starring stand-up comic Abishek Kumar, the show’s name refers to a village in Tirunelveli where the protagonist, Siddharth, assumes charge as panchayat secretary. Like any graduate aspiring for a white-collar job, Siddharth looks down upon his posting at the government office, treating it as a transit point in his career that can be used to prepare for CAT exams to get into a management institute. 

Now, anyone with the vaguest idea of how stories work could guess the course of the plot going forward; that it is only a matter of time before Siddharth, a fish out of water in the beginning, warms up to the village and its people, before taking to their ways. What then remains to be discovered is how these changes come about.

Mainstream stories have been notorious for their reductive attitude towards rural people by painting them as naive souls. Panchayat strayed from this beaten path as it presented a bouquet of eclectic characters who were clever, sly, kind, stubborn and more, all the while retaining the show’s overarching tone of heartwarming and funny. The gravity of the problems notwithstanding, resolutions almost always came from simple ideas. As it happened, this simplistic approach was the perfect antidote sought by an audience going through pandemic blues.

Hence, it only made sense for the makers to employ this winning formula while adapting Panchayat to a different milieu. But Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam does not stop at that and is a frame-by-frame remake, to the extent that even the conflicts and resolutions from the original are carried forward. This philosophy of borrowing is reflected in the casting choice too. While it was Neena Gupta playing the sarpanch’s wife, who headlined the cast of Panchayat, it is Devadarshini, the actor playing the same part in Tamil, who is the show’s most recognisable face.

As impressive as that may be, one of the show’s biggest shortcomings also has to do with casting. Jitendra Kumar, who played the protagonist in Panchayat, was, until then, a relatively unknown face to the country at large. His obscurity lent an air of rawness and spontaneity to his performance, proving to be a source of amusement for the viewers. With Abishek Kumar, the novelty factor disappears, for anyone who has ever been on Instagram would be familiar with his comedy sketches and expressions. As a result, a fresh approach and a new actor, that made the original show popular, are supplanted by a proven formula and predictable face in the remake. This is not to fault Abishek Kumar’s acting chops, for he turns in a committed performance, but has more to do with carrying the curse of social media.

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam’s bold strides come in the form of trying to address caste and dowry. But those are perfunctory at best in this season. However, like the original show, episodes have been set aside to deal with superstitions, women’s leadership and awareness of menstrual hygiene. The show also tries and contrasts the life of Siddharth, always surrounded by men in the village, with that of his friend in Chennai, who is foregrounded against a group of men and women, to bring out the cultural differences in their lives.

Ultimately, Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam is a prisoner of its own making. By staying too true to the original, it offers very little for those familiar with Panchayat. For the rest, though, it could be a different story. 

Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam is streaming on Prime Video

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