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Gullak launched in 2019, from The Viral Fever and subsequently picked up by SonyLIV. This was unusual because digital streaming platforms were spending millions of rupees on slick dark crime thrillers and magnum opus political dramas, while audiences watched fake gangsters shoot it out in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh. Then Shreyansh Pandey came along with something diametrically opposite to everything everyone was doing. He pitched a show about a middle-class family and an argument over a noisy cooler.
The budget was minuscule. The set was just a moderately sized and slightly cramped house with faded walls. They didn’t weave a convoluted plot; they just focused on the daily routine of the middle-class Mishra family living in an unnamed small north Indian town. The gamble, however, paid off in spades. It became a phenomenal viewership driver for SonyLIV, spawning four seasons consecutively, with the most recent dropping in June 2024. People tuned in just to watch four people eat dinner together.
Building drama from electricity bills
The general premise on Indian Television is always high stakes – murders, corporate takeovers, political machinations. But Gullak ditched the entire idea:
Writers here derive all the conflicts from the harsh and banal realities of a fixed salary. Santosh Mishra (Jameel Khan), working in a local electricity board office, lives with a series of anxieties centered on financial prudence-he’s visibly stressed at the sight of an empty room with a fan still switched on, calculating train ticket fares in his head; Geetanjali Kulkarni plays his wife, Shanti, whose daily life is devoted to the household and consists of slicing vegetables and firing highly specific, devastating verbal missiles at her husband and her sons.
There’s no central villain. Inflation is the antagonist and a broken water pump poses the same threat to the Mishra household as a bank robbery does to a typical thriller; an entire episode may be devoted to convincing Santosh that the leaking roof cannot be postponed and another to him waking up in a sweat on receiving an unexpectedly steep electricity bill. The show’s conflicts are micro-level, but treated with absolute earnestness-the sense of panic over the malfunctioning of a water pump in their home mimics the exact same degree of alarm felt during a bank heist.
Sibling fights minus the melodramatic conflict
The focus, nevertheless, remains on the two sons: Vaibhav Raj Gupta plays Annu Mishra, the elder brother, and Harsh Mayar plays the younger Aman Mishra. They share a small room and loathe sharing the room.
While typical Indian shows present siblings as either sworn to each other, or as mortal enemies, here the duo merely go about irritating one another-the son has just graduated and can’t find a decent job, so he retaliates by slapping Aman on the head every once in a while. Aman is prepping for high school board exams and being pressured to get above 90%, and has to listen to his father’s admonitions and siblings’ jibes about who has to use the toilet first to use it most, and also argue over who gets to sleep closest to the air cooler during sweltering heat.
These characters and situations seem extremely specific, drawn directly from the lived experiences of the writers, including Durgesh Singh and Vidit Tripathi. The family dynamics, however, continue to remain the same even when Annu gets his first, badly paying job as a medical representative, highlighting the nature of their sibling relationship-the annoyance remains the same, it’s just the reasons that change.
The neighbor and the gossip over the wall
A show about a small north Indian town wouldn’t be complete without the neighbors, and the layout of the Mishra home is key here-its thin walls and open courtyards leave the private lives of the family completely exposed to the next door neighbor’s eyes. Sunita Rajwar plays ‘Bittu Ki Mummy’, the ultimate gossipmonger who literally leans over the boundary wall and barges into the Mishras’ conversations. Her role, and presence, is annoying to them, and also the source of daily gossip-she spreads rumors about neighbors and makes passive-aggressive digs about Shanti’s cooking or Santosh’s income; despite being so irritating, Shanti still talks to her everyday.
The show very accurately captures the symbiotic and sometimes aggravating relationship between neighbors, and the entire network is mobilized the moment anything remotely interesting occurs in the street-the gossip about a strange person or a dog running riot across the street goes viral at the speed of light, with ‘Bittu Ki Mummy’ acting as the broadcasting hub.
The Narrator in the Corner of the Room
The creator has also introduced a rather peculiar choice for a structural narrative-the narration rights have been handed over to a clay piggy bank. ‘Gullak’ translates to a clay coin bank, and indeed one sits on a shelf in the Mishra living room-voiced by Shivankit Singh Parihar, this inanimate object watches the family grow and shrink with the savings accumulated inside. It offers a neutral narration and comment on the slow passage of time-the pot registers Santosh dropping a ten-rupee coin into it after a long day at work with the same sense of achievement with which he would otherwise record a monetary gain. The peculiar addition strips the need for any human characters for exposition or delivering lengthy soliloquies; the clay pot takes care of all that.
Four Seasons of Relentless Realism
Usually, with a TV show, a set, its characters, and even costumes tend to evolve; they gradually gain prosperity with newer seasons and more expensive items added. Gullak stuck to its guns-By the release of its fourth season, the Mishra household remained the same; only the paint has started peeling slightly more. Santosh’s everyday struggles with his superiors and job security persist, Annu continues to navigate the complexities of adult employment, and Aman faces his anxieties about proving himself to his family and the real world.
The financial struggles of the family have only gotten more apparent; a medical emergency, for instance, throws the family’s budget into chaos, and an argument over ordering a pizza from a restaurant remains as frequent and passionate as always. The aesthetic too, hasn’t changed-with dimly lit, inexpensive fluorescent tubes dotting the entire house and the constant drone of the city street from outside, it’s a complete contrast to the glossy sheen expected of most popular Indian web series. The show builds itself entirely on its steadfast dedication to absolute, unvarnished realism.
