500 more episodes please! Fame in the Family is perfect teatime TV

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This lo-fi Channel 4 show genetically tests contestants, then has them dine with a famous person while guessing whether they’re related – and it’s weirdly great

– that is mild and peril-free, the sort of ambient television that is perfect to chain-watch on an all-day hangover. Fame in the Family fits neatly into that timeslot: it’s on the outer reaches of interesting, like talking to someone at a wedding for just long enough to find one thing in common . It keeps you occupied without troubling you to have to stay awake.

There are two things that are strikingly delightful about all this: first, nobody on this programme has any idea what tone or shape it will take and it shows. The contestants keep sniping at each other in their mid-meal interviews – “I think June might be a dark horse, you know” – as if sharing some mild fact about how her mother used to practise clog dancing makes her more related to Craig Revel Horwood than the actual DNA test.

The second thing is, and there is no unpretentious way of saying this, the dynamic of watching celebrities interact with non-celebrities is refreshingly enjoyable. I am bored of seeing celebrities talk to other celebrities on panel and chat shows: it’s all just a charisma-off where everyone knows to keep their anecdotes nice and tight for the edit, and Jimmy Carr is doing that laugh in the background somewhere.

It’s occasionally like watching a king hold court. And then the reveal, every single time, is completely underwhelming – “Craig and Holly share Welsh ancestry. Though the others have Welsh ancestry too, it’s not the same ancestry” – then everyone half-drunkenly hugs before taking a “Related?! Gosh how weird!” selfie then going home.

That’s it! It’s perfect teatime TV! I can only hope for 500 more episodes of it. Judging by the amount of famous DNA sloshing around this island, that shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange.

 

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