Heir Hunters

After an abstinence of a couple of series, my viewing of television for the unemployed and medicated has led me back to Heir Hunters. I had previously found this 9 am bout of televised grave-robbery to be too distasteful to watch. Presumably in the intervening year or two I have lost any remaining sense of moral decency (which was always flimsy to say the least), and can now watch it with quietly resigned indignation, rather than outright disgust.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Heir Hunters is an everyday story of mercenary folk, centred on the ups and downs of a company of probate researchers. They look at lists of people who have died intestate. They figure out which of them it is worth their while investigating. They get in everybody’s way driving pointlessly up and down Motorways speculatively. They inform someone that their relative is by now in a state of putrification/reduced to carbon, and would they mind signing this contract please? They then claim a percentage of the estate for their efforts.

Yet, the tone taken by Heir Hunters makes this firm of vultures out to be some kind of modern day band of Robin Hoods. Only with an office and car and mobile phone. Yes, the voice over informs us: without The Heir Hunters the unclaimed money of the deceased would go to the nasty old Treasury. Or “The Government”, as HH puts it, because everyone hates The Government. Give money to the Treasury, and they might spend it on hospitals and schools and puppies for orphans. But suggest that it may go to The Government? Well, we all know that they’d immediately get drunk, fire up their tax-payer-financed laptops, book a tropical holiday for their ducks, and order enough champagne to fill their moats with.

Yes, the kindly Heir Hunters are going about their business in order to help those who haven’t kept in touch with their lonely, often otherwise kinless, relatives. People the potential beneficiaries often barely knew were alive, let alone that they had died. Because, as the intro to the show points out, “Last year the Government made £12 million from unclaimed estates.” The opportunists. Therefore we should surely be rooting for the employees of the probate research company.

Occasionally, the tension of the show will be ramped up with the introduction of an unseen “rival heir hunting company”. It gives a hint of Whacky Races to the programme, suggesting an Ant Hill Mob-type gang of foes, flinging tacks onto the M6 in front of our valiant heroes’ cars. In a recent episode, whilst at the house of a prospective victim beneficiary, the narrator informs us that a competitor has just turned up at the door. It is, she informs us, “not the first time [name of guy from OUR company] has nearly come face to face with a rival heir hunter”. And what would happen if he did, hmm? Would they be forced to fight to the death amid the inexplicably constant floral furniture of the inheritee’s living room, sending Beswick horses flying through the air, and tiny carriage clocks tumbling in slow-motion to the ground?

The thing that most consistently makes me cross about Heir Hunters is the BBC’s apparent complicity in allowing the show to be a vehicle of self-promotion for the firm featured. In its early days, a selection of companies was followed around as they got on with their morally-dubious business. Now there is just a very occasional cameo by one other troupe. The name of the firm is prominently featured in every episode. If the matinally fed-up population of television gawpers were asked to name a probate researching company, the one featured in HH would be the only one that stood a chance of anyone having any awareness of it.

There is a daily segment in Heir Hunters, in which the viewer is presented with the names of three corpses, under the auspices of it helping their surviving families to be tracked (for the benefit of these relatives, of course). The list from which the names come is published by the Treasury, and accessible online by all. Oddly, the named dead are almost always the previous owners of unusual names. Now if you had a rare name, and a relative of yours with the same rare name had died, you would presumably come across the Treasury-published list whilst Googling yourself. So not only are these negligent will-makers easier to find information about, due to their unusual names, but also less likely to have many relatives to find, making less work for our good old Heir Hunters.

Possibly the greatest breach of taste committed by the programme-makers negligence in its responsibility for non-promotion of the company-whose-name-I-am-not-mentioning, is by omission. After the piece asking if we know any of these dead people on this list, no means of contacting the Treasury to attest to your knowledge is given out. Instead, the scene cuts to one of our heroes driving his car, whilst the narrator casually mentions the company name once or twice.

As well as the extremely dubious prominence given to the name of the heir hunting company, I have a further objection to Heir Hunters. It is to the way in which the producers attempt to maintain the charade that the show is about family history. Trying to convince us that other peoples family history is of any interest is a dangerous thing. It gained popularity of course with Who do You Think you Are? − in which a dull celebrity travels to meet tedious people, and discovers that a boring distant ancestor had to flee the Cossacks, got chucked out of the Highlands, or had a relative who worked in a mine. Then they have a good old cry about it. It’s wearisome enough when someone you’ve heard of does it, but the ancestry of a loner who was known in the local for their interest in dominoes and propensity for giving financial advice to the regulars? No thank you.

The pretence of the relations of the plebs as being of interest to anyone has even leaked into Antiques Roadshow of late, I’m sorry to say. Now it is not enough to bring in a medal. One has to accompany it with the journals, photographs, false teeth, and Tesco receipt collection of its former owner. When everybody has always known that the only reason people watch Antiques Roadshow is to ask “How much is it worth” and “have I got one”. Well it’s the same with Heir Hunters. And its producers know this. The narrator tantalises us daily...”The Heir Hunters are on the trail of another heir...Will they be knocking at your door?” I’m pretty sure not. It’s not a live documentary, and I don’t think I remember them coming round with a cheque in the past year.

Anyway, a final thought. Last week an episode aired in which Chief Heir Hunter turned up at a house, camera crew in tow, proffering a contract for the hitherto-obliviously bereaved to sign. The ambushee said that they’d think about it. Later we were informed by the narrator that another company had undercut our intrepid do-gooders, and that the family member had signed with them instead. Fancy doing anything so underhand! I mean, plainly, there’s nothing unscrupulous about turning up with a camera crew, offering the bewildered dupe the opportunity to be on television if they sign up today.