4 min readJun 5, 2026 11:20 AM IST
Gullak Season 5 review: Ghar ki lipaai-putaai se ghar naya jaisa dikhta hai, par hota toh wahi hai na.
When Gullak 5 opens, everything feels the same. Well, almost. In that gap nestles both the charm and challenge of this latest edition of the much-loved long-running TVF series, which has jostled, mostly successfully, with how to add a fresh lick of paint to a familiar edifice without changing too much.
The House of Mishras, the goings-on in which have been our constant companions since 2019, is undergoing a literal paint-job. Papering over the cracks is not as easy as it appears to be, however: it’s not only Padosan No 1 Bittu Ki Mummy (Sunita Rajwar) who tosses out snarky remarks at the quality of the painting, it feels like every visitor, including an unctuous Mamaji, has the right to take a jibe at it.
But the biggest change in this fifth season, a number the team has been excitedly telling us is the first time for an Indian show, is the replacement of Vaibhav Raj Gupta with Anant Vijay Joshi as Annu Bhaiya, the elder of the two Mishra sons. While the switch isn’t a deal-breaker, I missed Vaibhav. By the end of the seven episodes, Annu is still beavering away at his middling medical representative job, with a possible romance (Helly Shah) tacked on.
Aman aka Mishra Jr’s (Harsh Mayar) preoccupation with jyotish vidya and setting himself up as an online astrologer comes off dull. So do the endeavours of Bittu Ki Mummy setting up a Mahila Mandal to teach the mohalla ladies the joys of being addressed by their own names: this business of trying to retro-fit feminism in traditionalism is just tired.
Gullak Season 5 trailer:
The only good thing, apart from introducing an element of needless slapstick in a series which has coasted quite well on imparting gentle if pointed life lessons up until now, is that it gives Annu Ki Mummy aka Shanti (Geetanjali Kulkarni), a chance to frame what it means to be a wife and mother for herself. She’s quite happy to be known as Annu Ki Mummy, thank you very much, even if it means rustling up chole-puri for a special family dinner, while Santosh (Jameel Khan) and the boys wait for the meal to be served.
So while we smile when Shanti and Santosh spread their ‘bichhona’ on their ‘chhat’, a rare moment of marital closeness in a home in which the unending demands of growing children and domesticity reigns– labelling it cozy doesn’t take away its daily drudgery– we do realise that there is only so much you can juice out of a middle-class home with their ‘small joys and sorrows’.
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Will the sutradhar, our trusty mitti-ka-gullak, be relegated to a corner in a house where the WiFi router now finds pride of place? Our smiles, broadest when the terrific duo of Kulkarni and Khan hold centre-stage, now come laced with impatience.
Speaking of, who really uses a gullak in this day and age?
Our verdict: The effect this time is strictly middling.
Gullak Season 5 cast: Jameel Khan, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Sunita Rajwar, Harsh Mayar, Anant Vijay Joshi
Gullak Season 5 director: Shreyans Pandey
Gullak Season 5 rating: 2.5 stars
Gullak Season 5 review: The web show stars Jameel Khan, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Sunita Rajwar, Harsh Mayar, and Anant Vijay Joshi.