Asian Provocateur: Romesh Ranganathan avoids travel TV cliches in his Sri Lankan journey

Romesh Ranganathan and Anslem De Silva searching for crocodiles in BBC3's Asian Provocateur. Photograph: Benjamin Green/BBC/Rumpus Media

Whenever the Indian subcontinent is featured on a travel series – comedically played or not – the same bingo card of cliches is inevitably ticked. The presenter will have "gone on a journey", found some "hidden beauty" and had their "eyes opened" by the experience. In a tale as old as time, the second that cameras hit the ground in south Asia, the Empire-tinted lenses emerge. The locals are pored over like animals in a nature documentary, a source of cheap laughs at, rather than with, them.

There are only so many times you can watch Rick Stein sitting cross-legged on the floor, sweating profusely from every gland imaginable and eating with his hands, before the whole thing starts to get old. Thankfully, that is where Romesh Ranganathan comes in, with his Sri Lanka-based series Asian Provocateur. It is full of more truth in one frame than an entire Sue Perkins vehicle could manage in a full run.

Playing out a "what if?" fantasy, Ranganathan experiences everyday life in Sri Lanka, which allows him to intimately sample what life might have been like had his family never emigrated. He attempts religious pilgrimages, takes local herbal remedies, learns specialised martial arts and has a go at stilt fishing, undertaking a crash course in the Sri Lankan way of life.

'I'm not doing it because my mum told me to, except for the fact that my mum told me to, and I'm doing it'

It is a wonder, really, that it has taken this long for a second- or third-generation Asian to front a show that tackles where their family came from decades before. It is a true celebration of the "coconut", as his mother calls him (brown on the outside, white on the inside), and watching a brown person feel foreign in the place where their parents were born and bred might well hold added significance for those who share a similar story. It is refreshing to see those cultural differences played out in the most natural, farcical ways possible. In this series, you laugh with the locals laughing at Ranganathan – the central conceit is flipped 180 degrees.

While Karl Pilkington managed to travel across India without feigning a "spiritual" connection with the country, what An Idiot Abroad lacked was affection for the subject matter. Ranganathan puts that right: the many awkward, compromised positions he finds himself in are the product of his unwillingness to upset his family, rather than a chance to play the scenario for broad laughs. An enema is performed at his uncle's behest, with perfectly judged toilet humour packing a punch.

Related: Romesh Ranganathan: 'I was a bumbling Englishman in a Sri Lankan disguise'

The romantic notion of tracing back his family roots is momentarily lost in the shock of his first latrine. Ranganathan conveys these feelings with ease; his good heart leads to often uncomfortable humour. In the opening episode, Ranganathan remarks that he has bonded more with his uncle's driver than the man himself, which is an observation that could be lifted from any number of similar accounts. The laughs aren't forced or overly engineered, which creates a purer brand of comedy.

Scenes inserted for expositional purposes with his mother in Crawley could easily come across as a contrived way of setting up the various set pieces, if it wasn't for her clear desire for her son to experience the country she was born in. In between sharp jabs aimed at his weight, facial hair and overall attitude are sincere pleas from mother to son to make the most of the experience and the family waiting ahead of him.

'One of the priests looks like the Asian Oliver Hardy'

This is the key in differentiating the series from the many others that have covered similar ground – Romesh Ranganathan is in Sri Lanka because his mother told him to go, and the documentary element always feels secondary. You get the real impression that, cameras or not, this was a trip he would have made regardless.

There are moments of broader comedy littered throughout, but none of those feel culturally insensitive, exploitative or in poor taste. A rap battle in a Colombo nightclub, for example, sounds horrific on paper, but in practice highlighted an aspect of Sri Lankan subculture few would have been aware of previously.

In cases such as these, more often than not, Ranganathan himself is the sole source of ridicule, and he gladly plays himself down to allow others to have their way. Many scenes begin with Ranganathan and a member of his family walking side by side in slow motion through rural side streets, soundtracked by classic hip-hop and grime.

Like all good British Asian-led comedy, this isn't exclusively made for people of a shared background. It's a hybrid comedy-documentary: don't come to it expecting answers to questions regarding how the Tamil people view the civil war, but more to see an average man from Crawley getting his first taste of authentic Sri Lankan culture, as his mother intended it. Borrowing from a similar formula of cultural in-jokes and solid observational comedy that granted Goodness Gracious Me legendary status, Asian Provocateur brings the travel documentary into the 21st century, planting a fish out of water in an environment he is not at all prepared for, despite what the colour of his skin might suggest.

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