The return of ‘Gullak’ in its fourth season brings up the challenge of keeping thing fresh despite maintaining its familiarity, and for the first time the signs of diminishing returns are threatening to set in.
Don’t get to me wrong. Reuniting with our beloved Mishra parivaar — parents Santosh (Jameel Khan) and Shanti (Geetanjali Kulkarni) and sons Annu (Vaibhav Raj Gupta) and Aman (Harsh Mayar) — which wears its North Indian ‘middleclassness’ as a badge of honour, is like a tall drink of roohafza-alternating-with-khas on a blistering summer day.
The key to this TVF show, created and directed by Shreyansh Pandey, is its relatability — their ‘chotey-chotey-khushi-aur-gham’ are either things we’ve experienced first-hand, or we know people who have — built upon its sheer likeability. But now, we the viewers, want more. But now, we the viewers, want more: simplicity is great, but maybe add in a bit of complexity, just to keep up with changing times?
Also read – Panchayat Season 3 review: Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta show retains its simplicity as it gets more ambitious
This time around, in its five 30-minute episodes, we get the themes of giving-and-taking ‘ghoos’ revolving around illegal structural additions to a modest dwelling; chain-snatching (‘chhinaiti’) and its dire impact on not just the neck from which it has been torn off but on other members of the family as well; the importance of being crafty without abandoning your innate ‘sanskaar’ and ‘atma samaan’; the problems of wanting to be upwardly mobile and dealing with an uncouth boss; and in the most interesting of them all, the difficulty of ‘adulting’ (yes, our all-seeing, all-knowing sutradhar gullak, voiced by Parihar, uses this word), and parenting.
Now that we know this foursome, and its most-favoured-nosey-padosan Bittu Ki Mummy (Rajwar, in her saris and sweaters), the writers don’t have to bother with creating characteristics and quirks. We know that Santosh will be extremely discomfited in slipping an envelope to a greedy babu, even if he (Santosh) works in ‘vidyut’ (the town’s electricity board where such things as bribery are presumably commonplace). We know that Shanti (Kulkarni owns this character so much that it’s tough to believe that she can be anything other than Mrs Mishra) is bereft by the loss of her gold chain not just because of its cost, but what the having of it means to a middle-class family.
We see the boys, having grown up in front of eyes, as they say (the first ‘Gullak’ season came out in 2019, when OTT was just becoming a thing; five years on, TVF has firmly colonised this middle-class concerns of passing exams-and-getting-a-job space) getting into jobbery (Annu is a medical rep), and teenage angst (Aman discovers girls and coffee-shops, and oooh, naughty books).
This tentative leap towards pressing teenage issues, where sex is a top of mind-and-body concern for puberty-stricken fellows, feels like the show is finally ready to acknowledge these tricky areas: the burden of being the repository of ‘clean family entertainment’, by keeping ‘such things’ at bay, or sanitising their treatment, had started to make itself felt.
Read more – Mr and Mrs Mahi movie review: Janhvi Kapoor-Rajkummar Rao film struggles as it tries to please everyone
The fact that their mohalla is ‘Hindu-mandir-pradhan’ is a reality in many small North Indian towns where communities keep to themselves, but now we are ready for the Mishra family to open up. Maybe the newly-acquired hope of being able to show a composite India will offer up more demographically-aware combinations? That it has the potential to be sharply political is clear in a character described as being ‘gadhbandhan sarkaar mein mantri’.
Props to writer Vidit Tripathi for slipping in the fact that dipping secretly into X-rated volumes is a gender neutral activity: it’s not only boys who have lien on this territory. The familiarity turning into flatness is real, but we also know how reluctant we are to embrace drastic change: is that what’s going to happen with the Mishras?
Standing by for Season 5.
Gullak 4 cast: Jameel Khan, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Viabhav Raj Gupta, Harsh Mayar, Sunita Rajwar, Shivankit Singh Parihar, Saad Bilgrami, Manuj Sharma, Helly Shah Gullak 4 director: Shreyansh Pandey Gullak 4 rating: 3 starsDisclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
