WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
BBC One, 9pm; not Scotland
Sue Perkins can’t stop crying in tonight’s bold opener of a new series of the long-running genealogy series. What’s a tough journey for her makes for a moving new instalment in the show that digs up a celebrity’s roots and puts them in context with compelling social history. The presenter explains that it was the death of her father in 2017 that prompted her to sign up for the series, but she soon finds that her family’s story takes several devastating turns. The first pitstop is the house of her former Bake Off presenting partner Mel Giedroyc where, in a touching interlude, the two leaf through old Perkins family photos and have a weep.
Investigating her paternal grandparents and maternal great grandparents takes Perkins across southwest England and even to eastern Europe, where she discovers that her ancestors were ensnared in some of the most significant historical events of the 20th century, for good and ill. And it ends in a way that mirrors Perkins’s own life to such a “mind-blowing” degree that, as she says, if it were fiction it would feel contrived. Subsequent episodes feature Richard Osman, Matt Lucas and Ralf Little, but given the pathos evoked by Perkins’s story, it will likely be a tough opening act to follow.