A potted family history
IKEEP worrying that they’re going to run out of famous people to feature on WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
(BBC1, 9pm).That the supply of proper personalities will finally run dry, and that they’ll have to resort to ringing up former contestants from Love Island or someone who once fell off a crane in Casualty.
But I’m fretting for no reason, aren’t I? Of course they’re not going to run out. Britain has celebs coming out of its ears, if you’ll forgive the somewhat surreal imagery.
The series starting tonight is the 16th, would you believe, and
yet it’s still able to kick off with someone of the calibre of Harry flipping Potter. Or actor Daniel Radcliffe, if we must.
That said, I must admit I had a few initial doubts as to whether I’d get through the whole of my preview of this episode.
Two reasons. First, voiceover chap Phil Davis declares within the first few seconds that “Daniel’s own childhood was nothing like that of the orphaned wizard boy,” which, let’s be honest, is a pretty huge let-down.
And second, Daniel turns out to be extremely fond of the rising inflection, persistently ending his sentences on an upward note, making everything sound like a question:
“I was really not great at school?”
“I think I felt very mediocre??” “You’re worried that I’m going to speak like this all the way through the programme and drive you absolutely doolally…???”
But actually I’m glad I stuck with it, because he uncovers a couple of genuinely moving tales from his family’s past.Well, all right, the researchers do.
One is the story of Daniel’s great-grandfather, who used to run a jewellery business in London’s Hatton Garden.
It’s clear this chap was happily married, so why did he end up taking his own life?
By the time a tearful Daniel reads the suicide note, he has a fairly good idea.
His great-grandfather’s business, he’s learnt, had been the subject of a robbery in February 1936 – the stolen items worth £250,000 in today’s money – but, with no sign of a break-in, the police smelt a rat…
Later, to look into a story on his dad’s side of the family, and to cast his eye over a precious collection of love letters written by his great-great-uncle during the First World War, Daniel travels to Northern Ireland, where a relative has kindly offered to kelp.
“My Auntie Linda, she is a repository of lots of family information?”
Yes, Daniel, apparently she is. Elsewhere, in NADIYA’S TIME
TO EAT (BBC2, 8pm), Nadiya Hussain reveals her latest recipe ingredient. It’s a can of spaghetti hoops.