Series synopsis
Long Lost Family is a British documentary family television series that premiered on ITV1 on April 21, 2011. It stars Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall.
Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell present the documentary series which aims to reunite family members after years of separation, and offers a lifeline for people who are desperate to find long-lost relatives.
Premise
Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell present the documentary series which aims to reunite family members after years of separation, and offers a lifeline for people who are desperate to find long-lost relatives.
Cast and characters
Leading cast
- Nicky Campbell as Himself - Presenter
- Davina McCall as Herself - Presenter
Episodes
This series spans 16 seasons with 109 episodes.
| Season | Episodes | First aired | Last aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 0 | 2 | September 3, 2025 | September 4, 2025 |
| Season 1 | 6 | April 21, 2011 | May 26, 2011 |
| Season 2 | 7 | April 12, 2012 | May 31, 2012 |
| Season 3 | 8 | June 17, 2013 | August 12, 2013 |
| Season 4 | 8 | July 14, 2014 | September 1, 2014 |
| Season 5 | 6 | June 3, 2015 | July 8, 2015 |
| Season 6 | 7 | July 13, 2016 | August 24, 2016 |
| Season 7 | 7 | July 26, 2017 | September 6, 2017 |
| Season 8 | 7 | July 17, 2018 | August 28, 2018 |
| Season 9 | 7 | June 10, 2019 | August 19, 2019 |
| Season 10 | 5 | January 18, 2021 | February 15, 2021 |
| Season 11 | 10 | July 5, 2021 | September 6, 2021 |
| Season 12 | 8 | May 23, 2022 | July 11, 2022 |
| Season 13 | 7 | July 3, 2023 | August 14, 2023 |
| Season 14 | 7 | July 8, 2024 | January 21, 2025 |
| Season 15 | 7 | September 18, 2025 | January 29, 2026 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
The Mother and Baby Home Scandal Part 1 First of a two-part series. A woman sent to a mother and baby home aged 16 seeks a daughter while two sisters are looking for their older sister. |
September 3, 2025 |
| 2 |
The Mother and Baby Home Scandal Part 2 Concluding part. Sisters Viv and Julie continue their search for their big sister as another woman tries to find her mum's first-born child. |
September 4, 2025 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Jennifer Wilson looks for her twin sister, from whom she was separated at birth when they were adopted by different couples. Karen Lloyd searches for her father, whom she has never met before. |
April 21, 2011 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 Ever since he discovered the truth about his real father at the age of 15, Wayne has been on a quest to find him. Debbie Gave her son up to save her marriage, she never stopped wanting him back in her life. |
April 28, 2011 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 This episode features Jeannie Elgar, who last saw her brother Geoffrey when she was eight, and Kirsty West, who struggled with the decision she made as a teenager to have her son adopted. |
May 5, 2011 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Mark hopes to find his birth mother, and Stella looks for the daughter she gave up 50 years ago. |
April 12, 2012 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 Brenda Rhensius looks for the daughter she regrets giving up for adoption, and Maureen Clancy tries to find her brother. |
April 19, 2012 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 Peter Arundel and Maureen Saville have both been searching for their birth mothers. |
April 26, 2012 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Sue has been searching for the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption, for over forty years. Alan is desperate to understand why his birth mother gave him up for adoption. |
June 17, 2013 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 We hear two lives shaped by unanswered letters. Wendy has never met her father and Helen is searching for her son who she was forced to give up for adoption more than thirty years ago. |
June 24, 2013 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 David and Paul Shannon are searching for their father who disappeared from their lives when they were young boys. The family moved from Liverpool to South Africa in the early 1970s and returned a few years later when things did not work out. After a brief stay in England, their father went back to South Africa and, apart from one brief sighting, David and Paul have never seen him again. Also featured is Julia Evans, who grew up believing her mother had rejected her when she walked out of the family home when Julia was a baby. Her family's strict religious beliefs isolated her from the other kids in town, and at 16 Julia was cast out of the community for being a sinner. Ever since, Julia has longed to find her mother believing that she too might have been forced to leave. |
July 1, 2013 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Ann Munro, 63, from Ringwood in Hampshire, gave up her son for adoption when she was 21 and her life ever since has been overshadowed by guilt and the longing to ask for his forgiveness. Louise Kendall, a 28-year-old nurse, lives in Bradford with her four-year-old son. She's hoping to meet her French father for the first time as she travels to Dijon, the city where her parents fell in love. |
July 14, 2014 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 Sara Price-Parker, 44, decided to trace her birth mother Denise after the death of her adoptive mum, but her 25-year search ended in disappointment when she discovered her parent had emigrated to Jamaica in the 1970s. Sara is now turning to Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell as her last hope to establish contact. Pauline Wood, 77, always longed for a sibling to play with while growing up as an adopted only child. At the age of 28, she learned her birth parents later got married and had a son, but the quest to find her brother has gone on for decades to no avail. |
July 21, 2014 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 Family man Richard Cue, 57, has always felt grateful for the love and support he received from his adoptive parents, so he wants to find his birth mother to thank her for the sacrifice she made in giving him up in 1957. Having accessed his records, however, he has been searching for almost a decade with little success. Tania Bartlett's mother Julie fell pregnant to Iranian student Ahmed Kazem in the early 1960s, but the couple drifted apart when Julie felt unable to join Ahmed to start a new life in America. Despite intermittent contact with her father in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tania has spent the past 30 years searching for him, not knowing if he is even alive. Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell bring these families back together. |
July 28, 2014 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 A couple search for the son they had to give up for adoption when they were teenagers. Susan and Chris were childhood sweethearts in 1962 when Susan was 14 and Chris 15. |
June 3, 2015 |
| 2 | Episode 2 | June 10, 2015 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 At 39, Peter Gunn has struggled to come to terms with being given up for adoption by his birth mother when he was a baby. Although he was brought up by a loving family, a sense of abandonment contributed to his going down the path of addiction. |
June 17, 2015 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Presented by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell. Two adopted people born on opposite sides of the world make an unbelievable discovery, and a seemingly impossible search in Ecuador. |
July 13, 2016 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 This Episode features two stories of people looking to solve family mysteries: a daughter who missed out on a father’s love; and a woman looking to put an end to a secret that has haunted her family for over 50 years. |
July 20, 2016 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 This episode features two stories of people separated from their mothers: A daughter longing to thank her birth mother for the sacrifice she made in parting with her and a man desperate to make up for a missed opportunity nearly 60 years ago. |
July 27, 2016 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Episode 1 | July 26, 2017 |
| 2 | Episode 2 | August 2, 2017 |
| 3 | Episode 3 | August 9, 2017 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Episode 1 | July 17, 2018 |
| 2 | Episode 2 | July 24, 2018 |
| 3 | Episode 3 | July 31, 2018 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell return to help more people reunite with long-lost relatives, beginning with 67-year-old Christine Rose's search for the sisters she was separated from at the age of four when her mother was prosecuted for neglect. The three young girls were taken by social services during the night and sent to separate children's homes. Nicky leads the search for Christine's sisters and the team makes remarkable discoveries, revealing layers of family that she never knew existed. |
June 10, 2019 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 Adopted as a baby, Nicholas Rhoades asked the programme for help in trying to track down his birth mother. The only information he had was her name and the address she was living at when she gave him up, but he never found the courage to knock on the. |
June 17, 2019 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 Singer-songwriter KT Tunstall always knew she was adopted and in 1998 was reunited with her birth mother, who told her that her father never wanted to give her up - a message that has inspired her to find out what happened to him. Brother and sister Simon Munro and Carole Killick grew up apart after their mother left when they were young in the 1960s, but the siblings were reunited more than 20 years ago and are now searching for their mother. |
July 1, 2019 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Episode 1 | January 18, 2021 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 This episode features two stories of missing relatives found much closer than the searchers could ever have imagined.... |
January 25, 2021 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 Two stories that take us across the globe: a woman's search for her birth mother in Sri Lanka and a quest on behalf of a father, longing to find his lost son.... |
February 1, 2021 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell return to tell incredible stories of people desperate to find missing family and answer questions that have haunted entire lives. This week features two stories of children searching for their birth mothers after life-changing events - former Scotland footballer Dominic Matteo, who started to search after suffering a life-threatening brain tumour, and a woman, pained with emotion on her wedding day because her birth mother was missing. |
July 5, 2021 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell present the stories of two people trying to unravel family mysteries, with both looking for a birth parent they have never met. Fifty-seven-year-old quarry worker John Hacking was told that his birth mother left him as a baby in a pram outside a block of flats in Buxton and has been searching for her since he was 17 with no luck, while Debra Spark has never met her Italian father Ernesto, who got together with Debra's mother Olive in Milan in the 1960s. |
July 12, 2021 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell present the stories of two women trying to find birth parents after half a century apart. Ann Melbourne found her birth mother over a decade ago and now wants to locate her birth father Leslie, who she has limited information about in her adoption paperwork, while Amanda Village is searching for her mother Susan, who gave her up for adoption. |
July 19, 2021 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Episode 1 In 2017, Jacinta Hickey contacted `Long Lost Family' looking for her younger brother Paul. Tragically, Jacinta died suddenly before the case was resolved. Meanwhile, 64-year-old Judy Kenyon believes time maybe running out to find her birth mother. |
May 23, 2022 |
| 2 |
Episode 2 Joselyn Turner was born profoundly deaf and put in a children's home at only two weeks old. She knows that her birth mother also had a son and is now searching for her older brother James for answers to her lifelong questions. In turn, James has also been searching for the father he never knew, and after 73 years, James finds more family than he bargained for. |
May 30, 2022 |
| 3 |
Episode 3 Two people go in search of their missing birth mothers. A woman taken to Morocco as a toddler against her mother's will searches for her birth mother while a man given up as a baby because of the colour of his skin searches for the truth about his family. |
June 6, 2022 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Paul Connolly, Shaun Lawrence Paul Connolly had a brutal childhood and was put out with the rubbish as a baby in east London and raised in care, while Shaun Lawrence had a happy adoption with wonderful parents but was always curious about his birth parents |
July 3, 2023 |
| 2 |
Sara Hathaway, Diane Kerridge Meet Sara Hathaway who, after losing her adoptive mother and older brother in the space of just a year, is desperate to find her birth family. Plus, Diane Kerridge shares her story of being forced to give up the child she gave birth to as a teenager in the 1960s. Over 50 years later, she is hoping to find her long lost son. |
July 10, 2023 |
| 3 |
Caroline Kinsey, Paul McFarlane We take on the cases of Caroline Kinsey - who longs to find the son she gave up for adoption - and Paul McFarlane, whose assumptions about his family have been thrown into doubt. |
July 17, 2023 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Ros Webb, Tegan Cornish The first episode in the show's 14th series follows Ros Webb - a mother searching for her only child - and Tegan Cornish, an adopted woman looking for a brother separated from her. |
July 8, 2024 |
| 2 |
Paula Beer, Sharon Thomas Mother Paula Beer searches for the son she gave up as a teenager, and a sister, Sharon Thomas, looks for the younger brother her mother was forced to give up before she died of cancer. |
July 15, 2024 |
| 3 |
Sue Stalley, Melanie Mackney Sue Stalley and Melanie Mackney, two women on a quest to find their biological family members and fill in the gaps in their family histories. |
July 22, 2024 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Lee Sharp, Peter MacDonald The unique bond between brothers is celebrated in the cases of Lee Sharp - who was told he was a foundling - and Peter MacDonald, who wants to see his big brother Trevor again. |
September 18, 2025 |
| 2 |
Paula & Justus This episode follows two birth parents. Paula, who is searching for the son she became pregnant with in 1979, & Justus Augustin, who hopes to find a daughter put up for adoption. |
September 25, 2025 |
| 3 |
Jayne & Kevin This episode follows Jayne - a woman who wants to tell her older brother that he was always thought of - and Kevin, who is determined to find his eldest daughter for his late wife. |
October 2, 2025 |
Production
Release
| Original network/platform | ITV1 |
|---|---|
| First aired | April 21, 2011 |
| Last aired | January 29, 2026 |
| Runtime | 45 minutes |
| Status | continue |
| Schedule | Thursday at 21:00:00 |