A doctor comes to a village, there to discover a place where a familiar mix of innocence and craftiness is at play, where a quack has a bustling practice, and where he, the well-intentioned doc, learns life lessons.
Replace Amol Parashar’s doctor with Jitendra Kumar’s ‘sachivji’, and you will get the set-up for Panchayat, TVF’s much-loved show, with so little difference as to be negligible. But given that clueless shehari babus having to check their privilege can make for an entertaining ride, there will always be similar shows.
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Dr Prabhat Sinha’s entry into Bhatkandi sets the tone for the five-part series. A funeral procession is passing by, the building which houses the PHC (public health centre aka gram chikitsalaya) is a decrepit heap surrounded by over-grown fields, and compounder Phutani (Dwivedi) and helper Gobind (Makhija) – reminding us of Faisal Malik and Chandan Roy’s function in Panchayat — express disbelief that the doctor actually has plans to stay back and do his job, and that he won’t just be a rubber stamp like the others who came before him.
The TVF stamp is clear, and the mandate appears to be the same: give the viewers yet another slice of rural com where the clash between city and village is laid out in slow-paced easily digestible chunks, supported by quirk and accent, steering clear of anything that would be hard to navigate — class, caste, religion — especially given how easy we are to be offended, especially in these times.
Local quack Chetak Kumar (Pathak), who consults Google when stumped, which is very often, says: ‘patient kamaana padta hai, bharosa jeetna padta hai’ (you have to earn trust and patients). Prabhat laments the lack of a ‘system that works’, and has to encounter sarcasm from a portly CMO (chief medical officer) for his very presence — ‘toh kya ehsaan kiye ho’ (don’t think you are doing us a favour by being here).
A colleague (Ranjan Kapoor) from a neighbouring village who seems to be a busy bee, contrasting Prabhat’s lack of work, gives him a sweet scooty ride: could there be a romance brewing? A nurse (Singh) and her troubled son (Kumar) get written into the strongest thread in the series, but it also results in heavy melodrama. Some politicians and their shenanigans feel like space-fillers. And Parashar’s Prabhat becomes a wiser man, without us being any the wiser of what goes on inside him.
Gram Chikitsalaya trailer:
This could have been something more. The connection between the lack of proper medical facilities in villages, and the reluctance of well-trained doctors to leave their cushy city lives for a ‘gaon ki posting’, has resulted in a system that’s broken. But the insistence on keeping everything cosy makes ‘Gram Chikitsalaya’ safe and staid, giving off a very Panchayat redux vibe, which may have very well been the one that the creators were going for, but which colours its brand new series in sameness.
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Gram Chikitsalaya cast: Amol Parashar, Vinay Pathak, Anandeshwar Dwivedi, Akash Makhija, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Garima Singh, Santoo Kumar
Gram Chikitsalaya director: Rahul Pandey
Gram Chikitsalaya rating: 2.5 stars
