Long Lost Family

The series starts with two heart breaking stories of separation: a mother and father who, having fought in vain to get their son back through the courts, have lived with a lifetime of loss; and a son's search for his birth mother, who disappeared from his life when he was a baby. 

Phyllis and Kevin Haran contacted Long Lost Family after more than forty years searching for their first-born son. The couple fell in love as teenagers in Ireland in the 1970s and a couple of months into their relationship, Phyllis became pregnant. Aware of the scandal this would cause within their Catholic community, they hatched a plan to run away to England to bring up their baby. But, in London, their landlady discovered they were keeping a baby in their flat and gave them less than 24 hours to get out. Homeless, jobless and desperate to put their baby's interests first, they agreed through an agency to place their son in the care of a family, with the possibility of adoption if they couldn't find their feet.

This week features two stories of missing relatives found much closer than the searchers could ever have imagined.

Our first story is of a mother who's never got over the decision made for her 50 years ago – to have her first-born child adopted. Pauline Pedder became pregnant when she was just a schoolgirl in Huddersfield. Now 65, she's longing to find her daughter, who she's never forgotten. When Long Lost Family takes up the search, an unprecedented twist reveals that Pauline's daughter lives in Huddersfield, has been doing her own investigations into her past and knows much more about her birth mother than expected.

Meanwhile in Blackpool, trainee nurse Donna Cowell's life has been overshadowed by fears of what happened to her younger brother. Having grown up in the care system and had a difficult childhood, Donna turns to Long Lost Family to find out whether her brother avoided the same fate. But what she never could have guessed is that her brother turns out to be living just round the corner from her.

Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help more people to reunite with long-lost relatives. Yasika Fernando was separated from her Sri Lankan birth mother when she was adopted by a British couple at a few months old, and has longed to find her since finding out the truth at 18. The other story follows Richard Standen, who is looking for the son he put up for adoption more than 50 years ago.

Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help more people to reunite with long-lost relatives. Claire Martin was abandoned in Hong Kong as a baby more than 50 years ago and heads back there to appeal for information about her origins, but with the help of DNA she finds family much closer to home. The team helps Nicki Goscomb and her sisters search for their brother, who was given up for adoption in 1966.

Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help more people to reunite with long-lost relatives, following a woman on a quest to solve a family mystery and find her sisters, and a woman living with the heart-breaking decision to give up her son for adoption when she was just a teenager.