Last night’s Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC One, Monday, 16 February, 9pm) followed Rick Stein as he mooched through is family tree. As ever, this show managed to find someone with a family tree worth looking at. As acknowledged by Stein himself, “history doesn’t account for happy families”, but jeepers, Stein’s family had it tough. Really tough. Through dead children, affairs, disease and manic depression, Stein burrowed deep into a gloomy place and came away from it understanding himself that little bit better.

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Rick Stein, in many respects, is the perfect candidate for a show like this. He’s open, gregarious and always a pleasant person to watch. The success of a show like this hinges on that very fact as, in terms of format, it’s a show that feels more like a radio programme rather than a TV show. The pace is slow and considered and therefore needs someone with many qualities to revolve around.

Aside from generally being a nice bloke, Stein’s family history was filled with abject misery. Through this, we got to enjoy the resilience and spirit of mankind. Stein’s father, Eric, went through severe mental trauma throughout his life. Being of German descent in first world war Britain, he was attacked and lambasted, before sinking into a harrowing adult depression. When Stein was 18 years old, his father finally took his own life.

Add to this, the fact that his mother met his father in an extra marital affair, which saw her losing custody of a son, and the bleak life of his mother’s family, lost as missionaries in oppressive China. It was there that children were lost in disease riddled Hong Kong.

Overall, the sentimentalism was battered into submission by the depressing tale, but mercifully for the viewer, Stein remained philosophical and in reflective mood. It’s the resilience that Stein focused on, and how he drew from that to push himself further. As ever, this show was a fascinating insight into the deep well of someone’s life… but it does make you wonder – Just how many stories are out there that are infinitely more interesting of people who aren’t celebrities?