TV tearjerker a born winner
KILLING Eve’s Villanelle tried to murder Dasha on a golf course with a driving iron. Shocking. She should have used a pitching wedge.
TIGER Woods: Back (SkyDocs). Tom Jones At 80. Celebrity Gogglebox USA. Philharmonia (All4). Not Only But Always. Ainsley Harriott’s shirts. Bradley Walsh: Happy 60th Birthday.
ISN’T Alan Carr’s game show a remake of Ant & Dec’s remake of old game shows – which ITV axed? I quite like Carr but he always sounds like he’s talking with a mouthful of (Cut! – Ed).
LONG Lost Family plucks heart strings like a master harpist.
Their Born Without Trace special upped the heartache with moving stories of foundling babies.
David McBride was abandoned at two weeks old in a parked car on a Belfast driveway.
Six years later, newborn Helen Ward was deposited in a phone box in Dundalk, southern Ireland.
Both had been left in red tartan bags, Helen with a bottle of warm milk by her side. Both were adopted by loving couples, one Protestant, the other Catholic.
But the mystery of their birth haunted them for decades.
Incredibly, through DNA testing, ITV discovered that David and Helen were siblings.
Their married father had been a band leader from Dublin with 14 other children (he must have been the horn section).
Their mother was a single woman, 16 years younger, from County Kerry. When David and Helen met for the
Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday, One Canada Square, London E14 5AP first time, above, they sobbed and cuddled, not wanting to let go. They could barely speak. Their parents were dead, but they’d found each other along with family they never knew. “I know who I am now,” said Helen. Presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell are uniquely qualified for this job. Nicky was adopted at four days; Davina, inset, was abandoned by her mother.
We can forgive ITV’s pregnant pauses. Although I did wonder why the parents had a six-year pregnancy pause. Typical band leader, relying on the rhythm method.
On Tuesday we learned about Simon Jeffery – left in a pub in Greenhithe, Kent, in an old corned beef box; and Fi Beazer, who found her father had been living with her mother and his wife!
Beat that Corrie! This was genuinely heart-warming TV that gripped like Homer Simpson on a donut.
IMAGINE carrying on with a band leader. Every time he wanted sex he’d tap your bum and say “On three...”
JANELLE Monáe, right, Homecoming (AmPrime)... Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Netflix).
ALAN Carr’s The Price Is Right, left – the host isn’t... BGT’s yoga woman – less “Om”, more “OMG, why?”
THE One Show theme tune. TV signers for the deaf who build their part with bizarre gurning. And for reasons I can’t fully explain, the confused.com C4 breakfast man.