A tale of two foundlings with a twist to make your jaw drop
No programme makes
me cry like Long Lost
Family. I don’t even have to wait for the reunion scenes at the end – five minutes in and I’m a puddle on the floor. But never have I
gasped in shock as I did in Long Lost
Family: Born Without Trace (ITV), which hinged on an incredible twist.
Most people who appear on the programme have some details about their beginnings. But David Mcbride and Helen Ward did not even know when to celebrate their birthdays. They were, in that term so redolent of Victorian England, foundlings, abandoned at a few days old. David was left on the front seat of a car on the outskirts of Belfast. Helen was left in a phone box on the other side of the border in Dundalk. Her birth certificate stated “child found exposed” under place of birth. “Quite a lonely sort of wording, that,” Helen said.
Both had spent years searching for their birth mothers and launching public appeals but had drawn a blank, save for Helen being reunited with the lorry driver who had discovered her. He recalled a woman in a car parked close to the phone box, who drove off when the baby was found. Helen clung to that piece of information; to her, it was proof that her mother had been watching over her, and that she cared.
The series usually gives us two separate stories in one episode, so there appeared to be nothing unusual here. But then came the astonishing news, discovered via DNA testing – spoiler alert here if you are yet to see it – that David and Helen, abandoned six years apart, had the same parents. The clue had been there all along: both were left tucked up in tartan shopping bags.
The news was bittersweet for Helen and David – happy that they had found a sibling, but thrown by the circumstances; each had imagined their mother to be young and desperate, not in a long-term relationship. Eventually, part of the story emerged: their mother was Catholic, their father was Protestant and married. They were together, illicitly, for more than 30 years. There were so many more questions, but likely they will never be answered.
Davina Mccall once had a reputation as a shouty presenter – she did have to make herself heard over those Big Brother crowds – but she is brilliant here: handling the contributors with compassion, tact and respect. Along with co-host Nicky Campbell, she ensures that a series which could be crass or manipulative is neither, but still breaks your heart.
The theme of the last Grayson’s
Art Club (Channel 4) was Britain. And, really, what could be more British than this show? A celebration of eccentricity, humour and just getting on with it. It has been one of the most joyous bits of television made during lockdown, a tonic amid all the gloom. The inclusion of artworks by members of the public has given it a nicely democratic feel, showing that we can all be artists no matter how wonky our creations – as presenter Grayson Perry put it, the only perfect representations are photographs and the ‘mistakes’ we make are not mistakes at all but our own unique style.
Perry has done a great service by demystifying the art world. All those Turner Prize-winning works that left you baffled? It’s not because you’re not clever enough to ‘get’ them, it’s because they’re the product of someone’s imagination. Someone like Perry, who may be an award-winner but is also just a middle-aged man who potters around the house having conversations with his wife about Waitrose opening hours.
Above all, the show has taught us that making art is fun. The “glorious outpourings of artworks” from viewers, from which Perry selected the best for a Tony Hart-style display on his wall, included a witty ‘Greetings from London’ postcard of a taped-off park bench. Sue and Adrian produced a sculpture based on the mask that Adrian has worn during radiotherapy treatment for head and neck cancer. They thought it relevant to the times: a feeling of being trapped while also knowing that it’s for your own good. “You’ve got to be a bit brave to get through it,” they said.
It occasionally got a bit political – this is Channel 4, after all – with Wirral artists the Singh Twins showing a nurse on a white charger, being stabbed in the back by Boris Johnson. But Perry got the mix of politics and humour just right. See one of the slogans on the pot he made for Britain Week: “We shall catch it on the beaches.”
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace ★★★★
Grayson’s Art Club ★★★★