In episode one, actor Ray Winstone visits the spectacular Colney Hatch Asylum in North London where his great-great grandmother's Hannah Stratton's first husband James was committed in 1875. Comedian Al Murray follows in the footsteps of his great-great-great grandfather and "Vanity Fair" author, William Makepeace Thackeray, to discover the lengths he went to, in order to save his suicidal wife from the horrors of the asylum. And Claire Sweeney discovers how senile dementia and old age mental health was treated in the Victorian era.