A sculptor, sex workers, a convict cleric... this house has seen it all: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS' five-star review of A House Through Time

A House Through Time (BBC2) 

Rating: Five out of five stars 

Natural history used to be the BBC's unchallenged forte. Not any more – the unlimited budgets of Netflix and Disney have enabled streamers to create landmark wildlife series just as spectacular.

But no other broadcaster does human history as well as Auntie. The past decade or so has seen the BBC pioneer an innovative type of investigation into the past, one that engages our emotions as much as our curiosity.

Shows such as Fake Or Fortune? and Who Do You Think You Are? have the appeal of detective mysteries but they're built on meticulous research, with the focus on details in forgotten archives more than dates in dusty textbooks.

Other channels, particularly Channel 5 and Sky History, have attempted to mimic the approach, but it's a type of television that only the BBC has mastered. A House Through Time is an admirable example.

I'd love to know how many addresses the researchers considered before settling on the five-storey house in Calton Hill, Edinburgh, for their sixth series. 

To sustain a narrative across four episodes, there will have to be at least a dozen former inhabitants whose tales are worth exploring, and this building seemed promising from the moment presenter David Olusoga walked through the gate to discover two front doors — one for the ground floor and two upper storeys, and one for the split-level garden apartment.

In the first room he inspected, his eye was drawn to a circular hole sawn into the wooden shutters. 

The lady who owns half the house, Morag, had a theory about that: perhaps a seafaring chap once lived there, and liked to keep an eye on Leith docks and the Firth of Forth.

Impressionists are out of fashion these days (they're the 'pariahs' of comedy, 'one rung down from ventriloquists', says actress and impressionist Ronni Ancona). 

That's a pity, because Olusoga is a gift for mimics. His way, of separating, every phrase, and even, each, word, with a pause, can be, wearisome.

He even does it when he's not speaking, with a blink and a nod to punctuate his thoughts. 

But when we're being given so much information to absorb, this earnest and methodical delivery is far better than an over-excited rush of words.

We met a clergyman called William Fitzsimmons, who nearly got himself hanged for helping French prisoners of war escape the country after breaking out of the dungeons at Edinburgh castle.

The sculptor Sir John Steell, who created the city's much-loved statues of Walter Scott and the Duke of Wellington, also grew up in the house, one of 11 children. 

His father was a craftsman who went bankrupt after managing to get himself £7,835 in debt — about two-thirds of a million quid today.

But the really intriguing residents arrive in a future episode. At one time, the house was 'an upmarket brothel'. Perhaps that explains the hole in the shutters...