Thalaivettiyaan Paalayam Review: Tamil Remake Of Panchayat Is A Terrific Transposition

A Tamil remake of a well-regarded Hindi series, Thalaivettiyan Paalayam, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, plays smart and steady. It isn't a photocopy of Panchayat. A terrific transposition, the eight-episode show has a tone and tenor almost entirely its own.

Directed by Naga and written by Bala Kumaran, Thalaivettiyan Paalayam is from the production stable that created the original show. The makers know exactly how not to end up with a dull, uninspired replication. To top it all, the series has actors and technicians who deliver on all fronts.

Taking next to no time to hit the sweet spot, it does not let familiarity get in the way of an intelligent retelling of a known tale. It factors in and plays up all the essential cultural nuances that separate it in body and spirit from Panchayat.

If you haven't seen Panchayat, this show has bushels of delight that will feel fresh and worth every bit of your while. But even if you have, the subtly altered character detailing and plot emphases are primed to add new dimensions to the repeat experience.

The principal characters, like they did in the Hindi show, grow on the audience. The various threads, encounters and verbal jousts that make up life in the titular village ensure that the story and its strands flow as smoothly as they did in Panchayat.

Thalaivettiyan Paalayam, created by Dipak Kumar Mishra and Arunabh Kumar for TVF, retains the broad narrative framework but makes slight but significant deviations from the original script to factor in the rhythms and characteristics of a remote village in Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli district.

An engineering graduate from Chennai lands the job of a panchayat secretary in the hamlet, hoping to use his free time to gear up for a shot at a B-school seat. He takes a bus ride to the village, a gas oven in tow, and sets up home in a room in the office building with spotty power supply. Ennui, brought on by loneliness, follows.

Troubles erupt from day one. As the weeks turn into months, he discovers the ups and downs of rural life via his brushes with the villagers and their idiosyncrasies. He struggles to enthuse himself about the job, the village and its denizens.

Political undercurrents and social shibboleths - these are repeatedly pointed to by the chairman and his cohorts - are a constant hurdle to prompt decision-making and action. His (mis)adventures and consequent learnings add up to an entertaining and illuminating slice-of-life comedic process.

The struggle of the protagonist of Thalaivettiyan Paalayam, Siddharth (Abishek Kumar), to find a foothold in the village is no less daunting than that of Panchayat's Abhishek Tripathi. He is after all the same character played by a different performer - bearded, bespectacled, stoic and bewildered as opposed to the clean-shaven, boyish and peskier persona that Jitendra Kumar projects.

In Phulera village of Uttar Pradesh's Ballia district, the city-bred gram panchayat sachiv, a floundering river fish thrown into a pond, had to climb all the way to the top of a water tank - it towers over the landscape - to stumble upon a reason to stay on in the village.

In the village of Thalaivettiyan Paalayam, it is a hilltop that the hero has to trek up to for his first panoramic view of the place and to discover an incentive that could compel him to fall in love with the perks of the job, if not with the job itself.

The Tamil script throws in the recitation of a poem in praise of Lord Muruga in a voice that instantly attracts the Chennai man's attention. He asks in jest: is this Tamil rap? From his standpoint, this village is obviously a world completely unlike the one he grew up in.

Abishek Kumar informs Siddharth - his family name is never revealed, leading to occasional speculation about his caste identity among the village folk - with distinct contours. He stands apart not only in physical terms but also with regard to his behavioural peculiarities.

The village, of course, is defined not by the outsider but by those that call it home, notably the elected panchayat chairperson Meenakshi whose husband, Meenakshi Sundaram, stands in for her in a village council that is reserved for women but is run by men.

In an interesting casting sleight, a real-life family plays a fictional one in Thalaivettiyan Paalayam. Seasoned actress Devadarshini is Meenakshi. The character's husband (and de facto panchayat chief) is portrayed by the actress' spouse Chetan. And the role of their onscreen child Soundarya, seen only infrequently, and in the shadows, until her face is revealed in the final scene, is essayed by the actor-couple's daughter, Niyathi Kidambi.

Panchayat's Prahlad Pandey is replaced here by Prabhu (Anand Sami), deputy chairman of the panchayat who, in a departure from the Hindi show, is Meenakshi's brother. But the divergences aren't only cosmetic. Unlike Panchayat's Manju Devi, Meenakshi can read, write and sign her name on the official certificates and documents that come to her for approval.

When Siddharth is instructed by higher-ups in the district administration to rustle up a public service slogan and paint it on the walls of the village, it is centred on menstruation awareness, and not family planning (as is the case in Panchayat). Predictably, the words he chooses and the candour of the message upsets a few people.

In Panchayat, the key characters are Tripathi, Dubey, Pandey and Shukla, all belonging to the upper castes. In Thalaivettiyan Paalayam, the caste dynamic is left ambiguous. It, therefore, has a greater latent and tangential bearing on the negotiations between Siddharth, who abhors all forms of discrimination, and the tradition-bound villagers, including his office assistant Lakshmipathy (Paul Raj).

Panchayat and Thalaivettiyan Paalayam exist in two different socio-political spheres. That is exemplified by, among other things, the portraits in the panchayat office. In Panchayat, the freedom fighters whose faces adorn a wall are Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Chandrashekhar Azad.

In the Tamil remake, while Gandhi is one constant, the other two places are occupied by Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru. Another key difference: the visual presence of the chosen trio is infinitely more persistent and assertive in Thalaivettiyan Paalayam than in Panchayat.

Thalaivettiyan Paalayam is especially noteworthy for the manner in which employs nuanced shifts to 'reinvent' a story that has already been delivered once with enormous success to a pan-Indian audience. Bearing the varnish of effortless performances, its veneer has no trace of any staleness.

Thalaivettiyan Paalayam is a deft transcreation that stands on its own legs.