A KILLING IN MY FAMILY, C4, 10pm
A GROUP of children sits in a circle on the floor with a nice lady leading them in conversation. They all wear little badges. Maybe it’s a playgroup? Are they all going to clap, and sing about bumblebees and lollipops?
That’s what the scene suggests but instead the group leader tells the children those badges show that every single one of them has lost a family member due to murder or manslaughter.
Incredible as it sounds, every week in England and Wales a child loses a family member in this way.
This documentary focuses on eight families (“why did my dad kill my mum?”), concentrates on the effect it has had on the children, and shows how charity Winston’s Wish is trying to help.
It’s agonising to watch. Some of the children are just too young and innocent to comprehend what has happened to them, and are thrown into horrible insecurities by the fact the violence often took place in their homes.
THE MAN WHO SHOT TUTANKHAMUN, BBC4, 9pm
NICE title. It refers, of course, to the photographer present when the legendary Egyptian boy king’s tomb was being opened in 1922 following its discovery by archaeologist Howard Carter.
Presenter Margaret Mountford, formerly Alan Sugar’s right-hand woman (or was it left-hand?), travels to the Valley of the Kings to tell the story of Harry Burton, the British photographer whose pictures of the excavation caused a worldwide sensation.
Claustrophobes might wince on seeing Mountford and her team descend into dim and dusty passageways as they try to recreate Burton’s working conditions, reinforcing how tremendous his efforts were.
We see how the images he sent back prompted a craze for Egyptian design, and that present-day photographers still use some of his pioneering techniques.
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