1/10. Tracing the family history of familiar faces.
Naturalist Bill Oddie embarks on a hugely personal journey in a bid to discover the fate of his mother, who was institutionalised for most of his childhood. It's an emotional quest that leads him to investigate the history of mental health in the postwar period. Years before that, the cotton mills at the heart of the industrial revolution in the North West of England provide yet more pieces to the jigsaw. Will he be able to see his parent in a new light?
See also Family Ties, a new series that follows at 10pm on BBC4. (AD) [web address removed] BBCi: digital viewers can access a range of programmes featuring information from consultant genealogist Dr Nick Barrett via the red button on their handset
BBC BOOK: Who Do You Think You Are? paperback: £8.99 (RRP £12.99) from [web address removed]. Release date 11 October
Celebrity histories: page 16; Bill Oddie's family tree: page 19

HISTORY Who Do You Think You Are?
9.00pm BBC2 "Who the Dickens were the rest of my family?" Bill Oddie asks himself near the start of this programme. It's the first of a new series based on the clever idea that, each week, a celebrity shins up his or her family tree while we follow.
Oddie himself starts with little to go on. Abandoned by his mother (or so he thought), he was raised in a Birmingham suburb by his father and grandmother. The latter, it emerges, played a shameful role in the events that led to the young Bill losing contact with his mother, who had schizophrenia and was held for years in a psychiatric hospital.
There are poignant moments as the pieces of the story come together. Oddie saw his mother only a handful of times, and he has just a few photographs, which he says are like scenes in a cinema trailer, "but I never did see the film".
Oddie manages to stay composed on camera - just about - but it's clear the discoveries he makes are hard to take on board, In the end, the journey is more fascinating for him than for us, but it's still a valuable piece of very personal history. (David Butcher)
Celebrity histories: page 16 6