Tissues at the ready for more Long Lost Family

Our appetite for probing people’s private lives, whether they’re world famous or Josephine Bloggs from down the street, has endured for centuries.

While the red tops and scandal sheets make a tidy sum from the ups and downs of A-listers and royalty, a more considered approach has been taken by the producers of smash-hit shows such as Who Do You Think You Are? and this, often emotional programme. It’s unusual in many ways.

First of all, Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell have remained in-post as presenters since the very first episode aired on 21 April 2011.

Second, it’s utterly unsensational in its methodology.

Many of the people who are helped by the show and its team of experts and researchers have spent years trying to track down missing relatives with no success but, quietly and diligently, and probably with resources most ordinary mortals can’t access, the detective work begins.

For viewers, the journey is a complete one: the background to each case, including any social, economic or emotional factors, are deftly laid out, before cameras follow the complex and emotional process of finding each lost relative.

Finally, (hopefully), there’s a grand reunion, as Davina and Nicky (and their behind-the-scenes team) pull off what was thought to be the impossible.

The programme makers have also pushed their particular envelope too, with specials devoted to twins and Unknown Soldiers, which tugged at the nation’s heartstrings particularly hard. There’s no wonder Long Lost Family is a double Bafta-winner for Features Programme, scooping the honour first in 2014 and then again in 2021.

Tonight’s edition tells the story of two sons who were given up for adoption and the families who have stopped at nothing to find them. When Andrew Barlow was adopted as a baby, his birth mother, Patricia Clark, refused to sign the adoption papers and subsequently never gave up looking for him.

Both mother and son, located on opposite sides of the world, desperately tried searching for each other, but they tragically missed their chance to connect. Patricia’s younger children Lisa and Barry also grew up hoping to one day meet their big brother, so hopefully this bittersweet tale of complex emotions and painful regrets can still end with a heartwarming reunion.

Meanwhile, in tonight’s second story, Julie Redman discovered as a child that her mother Joan had given up her older brother for adoption.

Joan always regretted the decision, and Julie promised her that she would trace him somehow.

She had been searching for over 25 years with no success – that is, until she turned to Davina, Nicky and the team for help.

We won’t spoil the ending, but it’s safe to say this tale, and Andrew’s, will satisfy our desire to peer into the lives of others for a while.

It might even make us hug our loved ones just that bit tighter too – and that’s never a bad thing.