10/10. Jim Moir - aka comedian Vic Reeves - would love to unearth scandal in his hazy family history, driven by the rumour that his mother's father was a bigamist. His compelling odyssey also examines the 19th-century world of domestic service. The series returns next year.
See also Family Ties at 10pm on BBC4.
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What will Vic Reeves find when he goes in search of his past, to his teenage years (inset) and before?
History: Who Do You Think You Are? 9.00pm BBC2
Jim Moir, the surreal comedian most of us know better as Vic Reeves, is the last celebrity to delve back into his past for this series. So, while his second wife Nancy was contemplating nipping off to Australia for I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, Jim had the alluring prospect of taking off to the north of England. (Although as RT went to press, it was confirmed that he was going to join Nancy.)
Jim wants to learn more about his elusive maternal grandfather Simeon Leigh, a relative he's has always found fascinating because he was "a spinner of yams" and, in a photo that Jim has seen, he looks very dapper - even sporting spats and a buttonhole while on the beach.
Jim's not keen on actually meeting up with any living relatives he may discover ("Living people freak me out... dead ones are all right!") but he is hoping to unearth some dark secrets: maybe a murder or two. And although there's no murderer in the Moir closet, it turns out h is grandfather did have a couple of skeletons lurking in there. For one thing, he didn't marry Jim's grandmother until he was 50 and, as Jim suspected, it seems that at the time he was still married to his first wife.
It's an interesting finale to what has been a superb series, but don't expect Vic Reeves-style comedy. Away from the cameras, Jim Moir (or Rod, as his family rather confusingly call him) is a very different man indeed. (Jane Rackham)
