After a night of cads and absent dads, a father to restore our faith

Britain’s feckless fathers came off badly in a pair of primetime documentaries. it wasn’t an evening calculated to make anyone proud of being a bloke.

When 18-year-old Marion told her boyfriend she was pregnant, he retorted: ‘i’m married’ — and she never saw him again. this was the early sixties and, as she told Davina McCall on Long Lost Families: What Happened Next (itV), her parents would not let her keep the baby.

it was 55 years before mother and daughter Julie were reunited, seen on an earlier episode of Long Lost Families. Clearly, there wasn’t much point for Julie in tracking down her biological dad. He had never wanted to know.

Marion continued to have bad luck with men, Davina learned when she visited for this catch-up. in the late sixties, trapped in an abusive relationship, she gave birth to twins Karen and andrew — both sent to foster homes as toddlers.

But Long Lost Families leaves us with a warm glow every time because, when parents and siblings are reunited, there are no recriminations. Decades of guilt and anxiety at rejection are wiped out with a hug.

the show is shot through with forgiveness . . . just not for the men

who caused so much heartache in the first place. that same pattern ran deep in

Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1) as Bond actress naomie Harris flew to the Caribbean in search of her ancestors.

she started by talking to her father, a frosty conversation across a desk that couldn’t have been more remote if they’d held it by long-distance phone.

naomie made it plain he’d been completely absent during her childhood. ‘We’ve been in contact a handful of times,’ she added, and couldn’t hide her hurt and surprise when she realised that his large family, including his parents, had lived only a short distance from her when she was growing up.

arriving in Port of spain, trinidad, to trace his ancestors, naomie wasn’t expecting to like what she found — and she didn’t.

Her father’s great-grandad was an overseer on a cocoa plantation, a white man who came from a line of slave drivers.

she wore a tight smile that said: ‘i might have guessed,’ as she shrugged off the findings: somehow, she remarked, these people seemed very detached from her.

that’s understandable, but it’s also less moving.

this genealogy series is constantly at risk of becoming dry and didactic: we need the celebrity guests to feel great surges of emotion with every discovery. and naomie did, when she flew to Jamaica in search of her mother’s folks.

the grinding poverty that her grandfather’s family faced in the slums of Cross roads, in the capital Kingston, left her speechless and sobbing.

But that didn’t last long. she certainly didn’t convey the impression that she’s one to wallow in melancholy. instead, she trotted off to visit a plantation where her mother’s forebears were once slaves.

it was all slightly awkward. Fortunately, back on Long Lost Family, one soft-spoken man was on hand to restore our faith.

He and his wife lived in Bogota, Colombia, and they were overjoyed to meet the daughter they had been forced to give up as a baby.

the good-hearted father was so moved, he made her a gift of his only valuable possession — his watch.

thank goodness there will always be some decent men.