Amazon Prime’s “Dupahiya” struggles to find its own path to popularity

When Amazon Prime launched its new sitcom “Dupahiya” on Mar 7, one of its promotional tactics was to create a meme video, where Neena Gupta, who plays Manju Devi in the veteran Prime show “Panchayat”, introduces Dupahiya’s Renuka Shahane to the audience.

That is Dupahiya in a nutshell: Amazon’s way to piggyback off the whirlwind success of Panchayat, by creating an off-brand version to keep the audience hooked as they wait between each season of the beloved TV show.

Just like Panchayat, Dupahiya’s story is set in a village, which is run by a female chief, Pushpalata, played by Renuka.

However, where Panchayat’s story flows organically, Dupahiya seems to be more calculated, bordering on artificial, as each subplot is strategically placed to serve as a lesson on different social issues.

True to its name, Dupahiya, meaning two-wheeler, revolves around a Royal Enfield motorbike that was bought as dowry for Dhadakpur resident Roshni’s wedding.

Dhadakpur, also known as the “Belgium of Bihar” thanks to its astonishingly low crime rate, faces its first theft in two decades when the bike vanishes days before both Roshni’s wedding and the local council election.

Right off the bat, Dupahiya characters have unusual names, like Bhugol, or geography, and Amavas, or moonless night, and even the nickname Goggle Bhaiya, who never removes his sunglasses.

This comes in as an attempt to provide some sort of comic relief to the audience, that buys the creators some buffer time to add contextual humour in the plot later on.

Except, for Dupahiya, the attempt at humour fails under the burden of adding an underlying lesson to every funny story.

The show explores different social issues, like dowry, bribery, skin whitening and gender-based power struggles, but the stories that depict them are overused, making each plot twist easily predictable. And even then, it barely scratches the surface, something that is bound to happen when trying to cram a dozen half-baked ideas into one narrative.

The lack of chemistry between the actors did little to convince viewers, with only Sparsh Shrivastava and Avinash Dwivedi standing out as wannabe influencer Bhugol and motorbike-obsessed groom Kuber.

A 40-second shot of Kuber sleeping on his dream motorbike despite being splashed by water was a rare original scene in the show, amid a sea of stale television tropes.

There is one genuinely funny moment in the entire nine-part “comedy”: when Goggle Bhaiya begins what appears to be a slow, dramatic clap during a council meeting, only to reveal he’s just mixing a bit of chewing tobacco in his palms.

Another promising subplot introduces local bike mechanic Pintu, who moonlights as a dance instructor. Sadly, it was cut short when it spiralled into a bizarre item number featuring Bhugol and Amavas in drag.

After a month of its release, Dupahiya is still struggling to shed its identity as the Panchayat knock-off. It is nothing more than a placeholder for those going through withdrawals of their favourite show. A filler series through and through, it has all the parts, but none of the soul.

As it gets renewed for another season, the makers need to ditch the morality lessons, and lean into a tight plot with convincing stories. Otherwise Dupahiya risks losing its status as Panchayat-lite quicker than Dhadakpur lost its crime-free crown.