Aisling Bea is well into her pregnancy while filming Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC One, Tuesday, 9pm), and so it is not surprising that the Kildare-born, London-based comedian and actor’s thoughts turn towards home and family, as she embarks on a metaphorical journey back in time.
Her trip follows the well-established formula of a genealogy series renowned for reducing celebs to tears as they read about their Tiny Tim-esque ancestors and the indignities heaped on them in the workhouse, aboard an East India Company steam packet to Chennai, etc. Bea resists the easy win of blubbing it up for the cameras, though the trek from her aunt’s home in Laois and on to Limerick and Kerry on the trail of her ancestors is clearly emotive.
Bea first came to prominence for her stand-up comedy. She reveals that her personality was shaped by her upbringing amidst “this big gang of very vocal alpha females” (following the death of her father when she was a child). She doesn’t go overboard on the gags on her rovings around Ireland. She does, however, see the funny side of a British camera crew accompanying her across the Irish Sea so that she can delve into her family’s involvement in the Easter Rising and in the revival of Irish in Kerry.
For the past several years, Who Do You Think You Are? has been narrated by Phil Davis – a British character actor whom Daniel Day-Lewis has heralded as a key influence. Davis grew up in Essex, the son of a soap factory worker and hospital dining room supervisor. Yet for Who Do You Think You Are?, he affects a starchy upper-class accent and bangs on about Aisling’s trip around “Aye-land”. By the fifth or sixth “Aye-land”, you start to wish someone would introduce him to the concept of the letter “r”. It’s weally iwwitating.
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Wibbly, wobbly narration aside, there is lots for the busy Bea to unearth. In Limerick, she hears that her mother’s family were relatively well-to-do landowners with 40 acres to their name in the late 19th century – which brought the unwelcome attention of the dispossessed and less fortunate.
Moving on to Kerry, she learns her father‘s family grew up in very different circumstances. Her great-grandfather was a member of the Volunteers and was all set to participate in the 1916 Rising in Tralee until it was called off after the German blockade-running vessel the Aud failed to deliver the promised arms stash. Bea also discovers that her great-great-grandmother was the first school teacher on the Blasket Islands, a role to which she was appointed in the 1860s.
She takes it all in, looking both surprised and moved. While acknowledging that history can be messy and that we cannot know how we could have acted if swept up in the great events of the day, she is proud of her family and their contribution to independence. Patting her bump, she refers to “a little girl I’m calling Saoirse ... which is the Irish for freedom”.
Bea is the likable companion on this deep dive into Irish history. The journey is obviously emotional, but she doesn’t ham it up for the cameras. The sense of drama is instead accentuated by the stark landscape of the Kerry coastline. As filmed by the BBC, it has the brooding, baleful look of Mordor-on-sea.
More than once, Bea stares into the middle distance, out over the jagged mountains and the grey sea beyond – contemplating all she has learned and how it informs her sense of herself as an entertainer, a daughter, and a parent-to-be. “It does bring chills without a doubt,” she says.
Who Do You Think You Are? with Aisling Bea airs on BBC One, Tuesday, 9pm
