Davina McCall issued an apology to ITV viewers on Monday night, as, while the host was late tuning in, they were already in flood of tears watching Long Lost Family: Born Without A Trace.
The award-winning spin off of Long Lost Family focuses on 'foundling' babies, often abandoned in the first days and weeks of their lives, who then spend years after years searching for answers on just who they are and why their parents abandoned them. Born without trace, with no birth record or name, they have had no way of discovering the basic facts of their identity.
However, for the last five years, Davina, co-star Nicky Campbell and the rest of the Born Without a Trace team have been combining genetic genealogy with DNA technology to try to help more than 30 foundlings unlock the secrets of their past and the first episode of series five proved to be incredibly moving viewing.
Davina took to Twitter with just minutes to go to confess that she was late at switching the episode on, as ITV viewers were quick to tell her that it had left them crying their eyes out. She tweeted: "I’m a bit late x watching on @ITVX @longlostfamily born without trace," with one of her followers quick to tell her: "Don’t know why I put myself through that every-time I cry like a baby" and another replying: "Unbelievable, sad, beautiful story"
The new series opener focused on Chris Mason, a man who was found in a telephone box in Lambeth, two days before Christmas Day in 1966. With the passing of his adoptive parents, and having raised four children himself, Chris felt ready to seek the answers to his biggest questions and contacted the Long Lost family team.
His quest to find put his true identity gave the show one ifs furthest reaching cases to date, taking the investigation to Florida, where Chris' birth mum emigrated to, before coming back to the UK briefly when Chris was born. Sadly, she died in 2008, but was survived by Chris half siblings, with older sister Marie telling Nicky that she'd been trying for years to track Chris down.
Things then took another turn when incredibly the team managed to find Chris' Italian birth father, Dominic, also living in Florida along with one of Chris’s half-siblings Jeff, meaning that Chris ended up having two new families to meet and get to know.
*For all the latest TV and celeb news from Chronicle Live, sign up to our dedicated newsletter HERE.
