Lost and foundlings
Long Lost Family: Born Without a trace ITV, 9pm
POSSIBLY the most moving TV show on the box, this is like a super-weepy version of Long Lost Family, focusing on foundlings.
Foundlings are people abandoned as babies, often in the first days or weeks of their lives – left everywhere from doorsteps to public toilets.
Born without record, often without a name or birthday, they have had no way of discovering the basic facts of their identity.
Step in the LLF team, with able shoulders-to-cry-on Davina Mccall and Nicky Campbell, and a few DNA swabs.
This episode follows the journey of Andy Hallsworth, who was left on church steps in West London nearly six decades ago.
He was originally given the name David Sutherland because he was found on Sutherland Place, and was born ‘on or about’ 31 August 1965 – information from a single piece of adoption paperwork.
Approaching the steps for the first time, the zookeeper says: “It’s so strange to think that this is where possibly my mum must have left me. The trail starts and ends with one document.”
In a second story, featuring the show’s youngest foundling, Natasha Carr explains how she was left in public toilets inside London’s St Thomas’s hospital in 1989. Natasha discovers that she was found after only a few minutes of being left in the hospital toilets. Despite this, she still struggles with being a foundling. She says: “Why me? Sometimes I think, ‘What did I do? What did I not do?’” It’s a tough search but it does lead to an unexpected breakthrough.