Crimes against TV presenting
Celebrities hosting investigative programmes is rarely a good idea…
Rumpus Media Ltd,Screengrab
- Caroline Frost
Add The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan to your watchlist.
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Romesh Ranganathan is clearly a lovely, warm, funny man. He’s also a very busy one, what with his weekly Radio 2 show, his hip-hop programme on the same station (Friday 12 midnight) and the return on Sunday (9pm BBC2) of The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan. He has become one of those people the BBC head honchos invite for sherry and ask, “What do you fancy doing with some licence fee money?” (see also Clive Myrie and Rylan Clark), before he scratches his head and replies, “I dunno. I’m quite interested in crime… Oh, and famous people.”
Hence, the first episode of series two of The Misinvestigations… in which he investigates the unsolved 1996 murder of revered rapper Tupac Shakur – one of the most scrutinised deaths since JFK’s given the prime-time crime treatment. I’m not going to spoil it, but I’m guessing you might have heard if a BBC presenter had solved this particular crime.
The death of hip-hop heavvyweight Tupac Shakur is examined by Romesh Ranganathan this week. Getty
Ranganathan might love all things hip-hop, but did he really need this TV vehicle, and did we really need this doc? A lot of the heavy lifting relies on his charms, which are plentiful but also a problem. With his quick wit he can’t help pointing out the clichés of the gig – insulting when he fake-complains that “the BBC wouldn’t cough up for a third night in New York”, deeply inappropriate when speaking to a friend of the fallen idol. It’s as if no one can decide whether this is an empathetic investigation or a parody, so they’ve opted for both. No wonder all the American interviewees look a bit confused.
Of course, Ranganathan is by no means the pioneer in this trend of familiar figures walking out of dramas, pop bands and quiz shows and deciding they’d quite like to present Crimewatch. In the early 1990s, Edward Woodward leant heavily on his The Equalizer credentials to present In Suspicious Circumstances, while in 2011 Fred Dinenage hosted Murder Casebook, although he had at least done his time writing books on the Kray twins.
More random was John Lennon’s producer credit on Did Britain Murder Hanratty?, a 1969 documentary intent on clearing the name of hanged “A6 murderer” James Hanratty. In 1999, Roger Moore travelled to Moscow to front TV documentary The Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files, and was far more convincing in the role of intrepid overseas inquisitor than Rick Edwards, who in 2013 went to South Africa for Oscar Pistorius: What Really Happened – shortly after the versatile Edwards had appeared as himself in Made in Chelsea. And of course, there’s Ross Kemp.
Professor David Wilson and Emilia Fox in In the Footsteps of Killers.
Do TV chiefs think these crimes aren’t compelling enough without a quiz show host to talk us through them? Or that these cold cases won’t get the attention they deserve without a celeb to sound the horn?
Are we meant to trust Fox more because of Silent Witness?
Most grating of all must be Silent Witness star Emilia Fox investigating real-life crimes in In The Footsteps of Killers. Has she played a forensic pathologist for so long that she now thinks she is one? Are we meant to trust her more because of it? Sadly, the opposite is true: when she calls her investigator wingman Professor David Wilson to say, “David, I’ve found the petrol attendant,” or adopts sad-face while the inequality of criminal justice is explained to her, I’ve never been less convinced.
It’s insulting to the audience, and exploitative of the real-life victims. Worse, it’s ruined Silent Witness for me, even more than the decision to bring Nikki and Jack together, and not make Clarissa the lab boss.
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Series two of In The Footsteps of Killers has double the number of episodes, so the producers clearly think they’re onto a good thing. The only consolation is that it’s a Channel 4 show, so at least not another casual bonfire of everyone’s licence fee.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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