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 .
