A happy ending for everso-humble Charles Dance
For an actor who is nowadays best known as the bloodline-obsessed head of TV’S most ruthless fictional dynasty – Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones – perhaps the most surprising thing about Charles Dance’s genealogical journey in Who Do You Think You
(BBC One) was that knowledge of his own background was sparse.
“I wouldn’t like my children to get to my age,” he said, “and know so little about where they come from.”
An unlikely prospect, given the myriad framed posters of Dance’s film and stage productions that adorn the walls of his home. But he possessed just two photographs of his mother. Of his father, who died in 1952 when Charles was four years old, he knew next to nothing. Indeed for someone whose effortlessly toffee-nosed sneer helped him, as he put it, “to corner the market in aristocratic villains” he had surprisingly humble origins.
Thus, he was an ideal subject for the type of ancestral guided tour we know and love, and of which we show no sign of tiring – despite this being the 14th series, with Dance the 121st to have had his roots examined. We learned how his mother’s side of the family, who went by the surname Futvoye, had been decorators in the Belgian resort town of Spa. And how they fled revolution in the 1790s for London, at one point running a studio, specialising in the fashionable art of chinoiserie and patronised by royalty, in Marylebone. Such arcane historical morsels are the meat and drink of Who Do You Think You Are?
But this was not to be the kind of hilarious historical romp that saw fellow actor Danny Dyer’s unexpected royal connections unearthed last year, or Boris Johnson’s in an earlier series. Although we did get an amusing portrait in oils of a great-greatgrandmother who, as Dance himself pointed out, looked very like him in drag. The real allure of this edition focused on the mysterious figure of Dance’s father, William, who lived an unexceptional but intriguing life that eventually led to South Africa. There, Dance found evidence of an unknown sister, Norah, whose descendents welcomed him with open arms.
The enduring appeal of this series is that every journey is personal. The series famously gets celebrities to weep for unknown ancestors. But you can’t help feeling Dance benefited more than most, discovering not only the dead but a whole new living, breathing family.
Family is at the heart of circuses, too. Which is why they start performing so young, according to Circus Kids: Our Secret World (Channel 5).
“If they’re tired or Peppa Pig is on TV they refuse to go to work,” said Tanya Mack of her delightful twin granddaughters Esmerelda and Scarlett, who at only two-and-a-half years old regularly steal the show with their lasso-twirling skills.
To say circus life is in these girls’ genes, is putting it mildly. “They’re 16th generation circus,” said Pav who, with Tanya, owns Planet Circus. “Going back as far as 1648. The oldest circus family in the world.” The girls even got a share of the takings: two crisp five pound notes each every week, which they stashed away in a secret cupboard in their caravan.
It was this type of detail that made Circus Kids so enjoyable. There was nothing fancy or innovative or even especially secret about it, as documentaries go. Just terrific access to a travelling circus where young people play a central role.
Young people like 15-year-old Yasmin, who offered a counterpoint to the notion that no one is too young to perform. Having worked for years as a sidekick, her heart’s desire was to have her own act performing hoop gymnastics high above the ground. But in a world where most trapeze artists start by the age of four, Yasmin was a very late starter. The biggest concern was not the intrinsic danger of the act, but that she might simply be too old to learn it.
Maybe that was exaggerated for the cameras, or to keep Yasmin’s motivation up. By the end of this opening part, after endless practice and gruelling hard work, she made her Big Top debut and looked to be progressing rather well.
Still, it rammed home the two central points of this series. That, at an age when most children are still in school, these tough and committed youngsters are already seasoned professionals; and that, for all of the hardships and discomforts of life on the road, none of them would have it any other way.
Who Do You Think You Are? Circus Kids: Our Secret World