Chetan Nikam

Must watch if searching for a light comedy show with no Blood Pressure shoot-up moments.

Abhishek Sir (Jitendra Kumar), PradhanPati (Raghuveer Yadav) and Pradhan (Neena Gupta) as usual did well, you can not ignore Vikas (Chandan Roy) and Deputy Pradhan’s (Faisal Malik) acting. Prateek (Biswapati Sarkar) with various guest appearances will make you laugh.

A simple story of the village panchayat system. Unfold of the village issues through a non employed CAT aspirant Engineer gets a job as “Sachiv” of the village and he accepts it just because better to be employed than non employed. The writer picked all the small details of the village, village life, nature of the people living there, their habits, lifestyle, clothing, talking, behavior, etc. and the director did equally good.
All the episodes are written with one simple issue that the village system is facing (like Condition of the Panchayat office in the village, Ghost rumors/believers – this is present in most of the villages, Pradhan’s Ego, social connectivity, awareness about family planning, village-level politics and it’s a manifesto, lagging women empowerment, matchmaking and dowry system, utilization of government schemes, power cut, etc).

Each episode will help you to know the village, its life better and will take you on a village tour (if you don’t know or never visited one). Maybe this is a fiction work but very very close to reality. You will enjoy watching it.

And finally, Water Tank will definitely make you fall in love with the village. 

One more good release on the OTT platform. Jaideep Ahlawat and a supporting cast rocked it. It proved again you don’t need big stars to make the show hit, you only need good actors with a good story.

One good thing about it, at the end no major open loop which keeps us thinking and waiting for next season like FamilyMan, SacredGames, etc. 

(When I heard about the PaatalLok, I thought it is some mythical drama but the sky got cleared immediately after watching the trailer). The story is a crime-suspense-revenge political drama with the “tadaka” of Hindu-Muslim-Dalit angle, Politics, Media, Police investigation, Family drama, High class-middle class lifestyle fight with salt to taste of terrorist angle. But with all this also you will not feel to stop watching before completing it in one go. Hathiram, Tyagi is best with Ansari, Sanjay Mehra, Sara, Ashutosh, Tope Singh, Hathiram’s wife, and sala, others have done justice with their roles. A positive end with Hathiram saving his self-respect, job, family and revealing the secrecy for us with keeping the system as it is.

Will not reveal suspense here but big planning and conspiracy for one murder are a bit difficult to digest. The bad thing about it, dialogues are full MC, BC, but this is now acceptable for the Indian web series. “Jo Bikata hai wahi dikhata hai” and currently dialogues with MC, BC words (Mirzapur, PataalLok), and intimacy (Four More Shots 1/2, Made in Heaven) are selling in Indian OTT. One more point which (always) surprises is why in the web series, it is a trend to show police officials have relationship issues with wives!

I will recommend it, for the top class acting with  the crime investigation suspense story (with some ignorance, but if you are a fan of the Dabang series, stay away from it because either you will not match with it or it will not fulfill your expectation)

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton