Unless you are a member of Frank Gallagher’s family, most people don’t expect their relatives to harbour deep dark secrets. But that doesn’t mean there are no skeletons in their closets.
TopTV’s TLC channel presents a show that tackles precisely this idea. Aptly titled Shocking Family Secrets, this television programme takes a look at some of the most gobsmacking, jaw-dropping revelations one can reveal to a blood relative.
How bad can it be, you’re probably wondering. Well how’s this for a start. Secrets are revealed about cousins who are married – but no one else in the family knows. Not that bad, right? How about living in the same house as someone and not knowing they were raising a kidnapped child?
Now that I have your attention, one of the most popular topics on this show when it aired overseas was the idea of people – who seem like normal, upstanding citizens who wouldn’t be mistaken for criminals – raising children who had been kidnapped as though they were their own.
While some of these secrets are eye-popping, the aim is not to freak people out or to make a spectacle of the subjects of each episode. The underlying theme is psychological.
Shocking Family Secrets aims to get into the psyche of a person who harbours such secrets.
None of these secrets can be described as mere white lies.
We’re shown how a particular secret was kept for ages, then delve into why it was kept and the need to maintain the charade.
True to TLC form, this show is advertised in a tongue-in-cheek manner, with the viewer being told that “every family has a secret and that secret could be you”.
The titles of the episodes may seem like something that wouldn’t quite work, even for a show with a cult-like following such as Jerry Springer’s – they include Secret Love Child or Serial Killer Father – but the revelations are anything but a joke.
The format of the show includes re-enactments, sometimes a little bit of investigation and personal accounts of what really went down with the people who were directly involved.
• Shocking Family Secrets airs on TLC (TopTV Channel 453) on Tuesdays at 8.10pm.