Tears, tutting and tragedy: Olivia Colman’s clan history is riveting

OliVia COlMan enjoys a good sniffle. She wells up for almost every role she plays, and famously sobbed her heart out as an over-emotional detective in Broadchurch.

So there was no hope that she’d maintain her composure in Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1), the genealogy hour that is auntie’s weepiest show. Sure enough, at every turn of her family history, the rims of her eyes went red and her voice thickened. Soon she was blubbing into a handkerchief and clutching at academics.

One indian professor brought her cheerful news of an ancestor who escaped a lifetime of bad luck and made a happy marriage. Olivia grasped the man’s sleeve. ‘ You’re my favourite,’ she told him, with far more sincerity than Brucie ever said the words.

This was the first of a new seven-part series and as far as i’m concerned all of them can be about the Colman clan. She was the perfect candidate for family history, not least because so many of her forebears kept excellent records: diaries, portraits and confessional letters.

Her great-great-great grandfather described to his brother in a long epistle how he courted his wife, a British army widow in Calcutta, with detail and pathos making the six- month sea journey on her own. ‘i’ve got quite little children,’ Olivia gasped between tissues, ‘so i get very emotional about it.’

We wouldn’t have it any other way.

emotion was not permitted to the diplomats on Inside The American Embassy (C4). it sometimes seemed the staff were embarked on an unfeeling enterprise to stifle the ambassador under layers of flannel until he lost all hope — not so much ‘Yes, Minister’ as ‘Shh, ambassador’.

To distract the poor man, Woody Johnson, from the plain truth that he was getting nothing done, they distracted him with treats and gadgets, such as the chance to fly a fighter- jet simulator off an aircraft carrier and shoot down an enemy.

The trainer explained that the ‘fire’ button was really the ‘pickle’ switch — hotshot pilots can drop their bombs into a pickle barrel, he assured Woody with a straight face. Feeling macho, Woody found a female delegate he could impress with this fact. ‘You just drop your pickle,’ he explained.

The ambassador has an eye for the ladies. Meeting singer Katherine Jenkins, he told her: ‘any time you’re around, you want to stop by and say hello . . .’

Moments like these made a joy of a documentary that might otherwise have been dry.