A series is endearing to a viewer for the freshness it offers. At least, that’s the story of the first season. A second season is like a second helping, one wants more of the same. The third is the real tricky territory. A balance has to be made. What more can this world offer, without crumbling on itself? Everybody wants what the screenwriting manuals suggest: “Old wine in a new bottle.”The third season of Panchayat has reportedly crossed 12 million views in the week of its release. The show’s first instalment premiered in April 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was starting to spread its tentacles. With a rapidly changing reality outside the window, with its nostalgia, its old-world charm, Panchayat comforted its viewers in their living rooms. The series also got its lead Jitendra Kumar aka Jeetu noticed by an older audience, at a time when he was contained in the smartphone screen of the TVF-watching-teenager. We speak to Jitendra about how life has changed for him over the seasons, his newfound audience and how the Madhya Pradesh village, the series has been shot in, has evolved over the years.Excerpts:Panchayat came at a time when OTT was inundated with fast-paced, gritty shows. It is a relatively calmer series. All those years back when you got the script, what was your take on it?I remember this idea was very different from all the other ideas I discussed with the makers. We all had come from urban backgrounds, so, a series that is entirely set in a village was uncharted territory for us. We were all apprehensive about who would watch it. But for me, I found it very fresh on the page itself. I also thought there was a lot of scope to expand this story, many nuggets about rural life we can get by talking to the villagers. We were of the opinion that once anybody starts watching Panchayat, they wouldn’t want to abandon it. But such wide acceptance was a surprise.
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