It’s always good to return to Phulera, the fictional village which houses the simple folk of Panchayat. It’s akin to going to your hometown and meeting an old friend. Frequenting the same spots, cracking up at the same jokes. The charm of Phulera hasn’t dimmed. It is still serene and calming to sit back, relax and get back into its world. Familiarity is comfort. It’s just that soon you realise that this old friend might be repeating their stories, reiterating their perspective on life you have heard multiple times before. And even though internally you are sighing, you can’t help but smile and nod along. They haven’t changed since you left and that’s not always a good thing.Directors: Deepak Kumar Mishra and Akshat VijayvargiyaWriter: Chandan KumarCast: Jitendra Kumar, Raghuvir Yadav, Neena Gupta, Chandan Roy, Faisal Malik, Sunita Rajwar, Durgesh Kumar and SanvikaaAlthough the villagers have their mufflers and monkeycaps on, Phulera is metaphorically simmering in election heat. It’s a head-on between Manju devi (Neena Gupta) and Kranti devi (the impressive Sunita Rajwar). Sachiv ji Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar), assistant secretary Vikas (Chandan Roy) and Prahlad (Faisal Malik) are busy with poll campaigning, while Pradhan ji (Raghubir Yadav) is nursing a gunshot wound which he suffered at the climax of the previous season. The trio of Bhushan aka Banrakas (Durgesh Kumar), Binod (Ashok Pathak) and Madhav ( Bulloo Kumar) are both scheming and coming up with campaign schemes. Every episode is a one-up competition between Pradhan and Banrakas’s factions. They can be seen tussling over samosas as freebies, toilets to clean and electricity generators. Through inconsequential shenanigans, writer Chandan Kumar and directors Deepak Kumar Mishra and Akshat Vijayvargiya attempt to showcase a village as a microcosm of the democratic process. The satire, however, has gone stale. Laugh out loud moments are few and far between and character arcs are more of straight lines. Like every good art, without any fresh input, the show is becoming a parody of itself.
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