A still from ‘Dupahiya’

Gajraj Rao can act in his sleep. Quite literally. An agreeably slapstick moment in the new Prime Video comedy series Dupahiya finds Rao’s character, a kindly but superstitious school principal, snoring away on a cot, making sweet music with those silly, rumbling, guttural sounds. Rao has the training of theatre, of engaging a crowd with the bare tools of physicality and behaviour, and is so warm and winsome a comedian that we tend to forget his nastier roles (he played the menacing, mysterious caller in 2008’s Aamir).

Perhaps Dupahiya could have harnessed Rao’s lurking nastiness to lend itself some zing. Built around a stolen motorcycle in a village, this is a ‘Panchayat’ lite, a sweet, soporific series that passes the time, exceedingly flaky and forgettable. Director Sonam Nair, who made the charmingly zany short film Khujli once upon a time, is decidedly out of her depth in the rural setting. The writing (by Chirag Garg and Avinash Dwivedi) is vacant and amateurish, the texture crumbly and second-hand. The oddball cast exhausts its whimsy in the first three episodes; indulged for six more, they verge on annoying.

The series begins on a fertile note. Dhadakpur, a fictitious village in Bihar, is on the cusp of celebrating 25 years of going ‘crime-free’. It’s a distinction built on extremely shaky ground: dowry, for instance, is as prevalent as anywhere. Dhadakpur is only ‘crime-free’ because no one has registered an FIR in a while. One night, however, the unthinkable happens: a motorcycle robbery at knifepoint. The suspects range from a lovelorn kleptomaniac to a local moneybag. The model village has too many idiots.

Hanging in the balance is the fate and fortune of one family. School master Banwari Jha (Gajraj Rao) had blown his life’s savings in purchasing the gleaming two-wheeler (dupahiya). It was intended as dowry for his daughter’s wedding, due in eight days. The girl, Roshni (Shivani Raghuvanshi), dreams of city life, an ambition shared by her wayward brother, Bhugol (Sparsh Shrivastava).

Bhugol means ‘geography’, a plausible name for the footloose son of a school teacher. This is largely the drift of the show’s humour. Dupahiya takes after other recent (and far superior) satirical comedies like Kathal and Laapataa Ladies. Meanwhile, Renuka Shahane, playing a wily and hassled village chief, could have easily exchanged notes with Neena Gupta and Raghuvir Yadav from Panchayat. It is difficult to appraise the series in light of these works. Nair casts a glancing eye at the issues of village life. Like Phulera, Dhadakpur is another listless, unhurried, fly-swatting idyll, awkwardly modernizing yet stuck in tradition and time. It lacks the incisiveness of Panchayat, and, even more damningly, the warmth and wonderment of Malegaon.

Piled with off-kilter quests and crazy characters, Dupahiya threatens to stall. Only Gajraj Rao, somehow, keeps it rolling. Though raised in Delhi, the actor has a face straight out of a classic Bengali comic-strip. His square, amiable features can curl into a smile or a scowl, with equal zest. Banwari, like most well-meaning Indian dads, is a patriarch, yet we feel for him. He is a ‘temporary’ principal, but Rao a permanent charmer.

Dupahiya is streaming on Prime Video