Antiques Roadshow
BBC1

Antiques Roadshow, which first aired on the BBC in 1979, has remained almost unchanged for 40 years; playing to a very British appetite for historical anecdote as well as bargain hunting, it has been a Sunday evening ratings favourite. The format is a winner: a historical setting provides the backdrop against which members of the public bring treasured or interesting items to experts who discuss them and, in a final flourish, give their owners an estimate of how much they would be worth at auction.

 The revelation of monetary value gives a flash of present-day excitement but it is the background stories to the pieces that give the programme its human drama.

As part of preparations  to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday, the Roadshow (15 January) looked at objects that spoke not just of individual experience but of the suffering of millions. In partnership with the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, the programme’s experts looked at a selection of objects brought in by survivors of that genocide and their descendants.