Having started his career as a droll comedian, Romesh Ranganathan is becoming the new Louis Theroux. It is in the deadpan tradition of Theroux’s documentaries that Ranganathan follows in the fascinating first episode of The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan (BBC Two, Sunday, 9pm), in which the subject at hand is the unsolved gunning down of Tupac Shaker, the iconic rapper, in 1996.
Ranganathan begins by revealing that he’s a lifelong rap fan keen to debunk negative stereotypes of hip-hop and the idea that it’s inherently nihilistic and misogynistic. Although he acknowledges that some of Tupac’s lyrics are sexist and that the rapper served a nine-month prison for sexual assault, he regards Tupac as an example of a hip-hop artist fuelled by empathy rather than hate.
But, with so much already written and said about the shooting in Las Vegas against the backdrop of a spiralling feud between his label, Death Row, and P Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, does a sardonic middle-aged British comedian have anything new to add?
Ranganathan thinks not. There’s a funny early scene in this enjoyable film in which his producer asks him to do a piece to camera in which he promises to solve the mystery of Tupac’s killing; the presenter simply can’t carry it off. But he nonetheless has fun as he and a criminal psychologist, Julia Shaw, travel to the United States to speak to those in Tupac’s orbit.
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One person he doesn’t interview is Suge Knight, the NFL defensive end turned hip-hop mogul and Death Row founder, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter after driving over a friend in a fit of anger in 2015. He instead meets Danny Boy, a Death Row contemporary of Tupac, who describes Shakur as a once-in-a-generation talent. “You couldn’t outwrite him, you couldn’t outrap him,” he says of Tupac. “He was the Picasso of drawing a picture of what the song was supposed to look like.”
Having retraced Tupac’s route on the night he was shot in Las Vegas – Knight was travelling alongside Shakur – the duo go to Los Angeles. Ranganathan takes a tour of the storied suburb of Compton – birthplace of gangsta rap – with a former Death Row Records employee, Big Mike. He tells the comedian that Tupac was killed by Orlando Anderson, a small-time drug dealer and Tupac fan who took it personally when Shakur rebuffed an autograph request.
Ranganathan struggles to take Big Mike at face value. But his claims about Anderson are seemingly vindicated by a former Los Angeles police detective, Greg Kading, who plays a tape in which Anderson’s drug-dealer uncle, Keith Davis, claims that his nephew indeed pulled the trigger. Several months later Davis is arrested for his alleged role in the death of Tupac. (He was with Anderson in Las Vegas on that fateful night in 1996. Davis is now awaiting trial, having pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.)
Back in London, Ranganathan has a philosophical take on a tragic story. Tupac was a troubled and contradictory figure, but in allying with Suge Knight he went to the dark side. “If you throw yourself into something like that, chances are you’re going to get your fingers burned,” the comic says. “That’s what happened to Tupac.”
