MINISERIES PREMIERE: This 10-part dramatization of the murders, and the several separate murder investigations, of young rap artists Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G. They died in the late 1990s, a year apart, as young men who had risen to stardom in the music world on different coasts: Shakur was 25 when he was shot and killed, and Wallace was 24. But who shot them, and why? And were the deaths related, or even gang-related?
Unsolved, which is the proposed pilot for a recurring anthology series, doesn’t solve the mystery, and doesn’t have to (check the title). But in trying to humanize everyone involved, from the rap stars and entourages to the various law-enforcement investigations,
Unsolved misses the mark somehow, and many more scenes seem acted, and enacted, and meticulously re-enacted, than they seem convincing or engrossing. You don’t have to solve a crime to make a riveting TV mystery miniseries – remember
Fatal Vision, way back in 1984? – but you do have to stage it, and structure it, more clearly and compellingly than this. Still, if you’re relatively unaware of the particulars of these cases,
Unsolved is worth sampling. Marcc Rose plays Tupac, and Wavyy Jonez plays Biggie, but this drama’s main stars are the various investigators, played by Jimmi Simpson, Josh Duhamel, and Bokeem Woodbine.
For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.