I really enjoy things like Who Do You Think You Are?, so when I found out that the BBC were going to do a World War I spin-off (of sorts) called My Family At War I was really keen to watch. I’ve always been fascinated and moved by the so-called Great War (its absurdity, its senseless killing and the way it ravaged pretty much every village community in western Europe), so this combination of family history and WWI was a must-watch for me. In the lead-up to Remembrance Sunday, I’m glad it lived up to expectations.

For all our Who Do You Think You Are? news and reviews, go here.

TV historian Dan Snow was reading through letters of his great-grandfather Sir Thomas Snow, one of the most senior figures in the army at the time. Dan, who I’ve always quite liked, told us that even though he’s done loads of history on the telly he had never looked into Sir Thomas’ past – he wasn’t sure what he’d find.

Dovetailing with Dan’s story was ex-Ender Natalie Cassidy. She was off to Belgium to a big cemetery to find out what had happened to her great-grandfather, Charlie Pike. She was told by an historian that he joined the Grave Exhumation Unit after the war, and was taken on an extraordinary tour to find out what this gruesome-sounding job entailed (she did quite a lot of grimacing as she was told what .

Dan, now riding horseback in northern France, was finding more about Thomas from his personal journals. Thomas was a big cheese in the days of Empire, but he sound found out that the open warfare he was an expert in had been exchanged for trench warfare, poisonous gas and new types of weaponry. When Sue Johnstone (the narrator) told us that Dan was going to Ypres I shuddered for him and his great-grandfather, because we all know what happened in Ypres. His journals revealed the true mindset of Sir Thomas – he saw a Zeppelin for the first time and thought the world was ending. For an old man who hadn’t got a clue about what to do.

Natalie went back to London and delved a bit deeper into her family, and the kind of jobs some of her relatives did during the war. Rosina (nice name), her great-grandmother on the other side of her family, was probably, she found out, a tram driver, while another relative Sissy could well have worked in a respirator factory. She also saw where a bomb exploded outside her family’s on Holloway Road, and found out more about the women’s vote, which Rosina took part in.

Dan went to the Somme. I shuddered again. Dan went to meet the grandson, Alan Higgins, of a soldier who served under General Snow in that battle. That horrible, catastrophic battle. During the first two hours of the battle, General Snow lost 4,000 men and the attack was the fiasco. Watching Alan and Dan, reading their grandfathers’ journals to each other where the battle actually took place was extraordinarily moving. Dan was feeling the weight of his grandfather’s burden but, unperturbed, he wanted to know whether the General was responsible for the slaughter through bad decision making.

Phooh… would you want to find out? So… Dan, hold your breath. Most battalions lost 80 per cent of their men and while this was happening, General Snow was miles behind the line directing traffic in a chateau. He also buggered off back to England for a bit during the battle’s final phases. Not surprisingly, the historian was fairly harsh on General Snow.

These absurdities were further enhanced when Dan read from the General’s journal. During the “single worse week in British history”, Snow had written about the weather how well everything was going and how the sun was shining. “A stunning, stunning piece of self-delusion,” said Dan, a bit choked.

If things couldn’t get any worse, in the post-war investigations revealed that General Snow actually blamed his men for a lack of “offensive spirit” for the wholesale slaughter. Dan was very ready to admit that this was unacceptable. The historian telling him about the commission, explained that his great-uncle was one of the men, under General Snow’s command, had died in the Somme. Poor Dan, he was getting it from everywhere. He said sorry. That’s all he could do.

These kinds of stories brought the War to life expertly, and I really enjoyed this. I like the way I learned stuff, the way it was framed with black blurry edges like an old sepia photograph, and I liked the way we went on the same sorts of journeys like Who Do You Think You Are? Brilliant stuff, but why on so late? This deserves to be seen by young people and old. Actually, it demands to be seen by everyone.

It continues every night this week.