Actor Brian Cox and actress Felicity Kendal trace their own family histories back into the Victorian workhouse system, using parish records, admission ledgers, and historians to reconstruct what happened to their ancestors. Cox follows the paper trail of relatives who slipped out from under the institution's shadow, while Kendal learns that her great-grandmother was committed to a workhouse after her husband discovered her affair and used the system to punish her. Historians walk through the daily mechanics of workhouse life, from the harsh labor tests meant to deter all but the truly destitute to the social stigma that could follow a family for generations. The film treats the workhouse not as an abstract Victorian institution but as a real place that swallowed specific people, some of whom clawed their way back out and some who did not. Archive documents and location visits ground the genealogical detective work, making the wider social history of Victorian poverty legible through two individual family stories.