Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell present the stories of men brought up in the care system who are trying to reconnect with the families that were taken from them. Murray Phillips was adopted from a children's home as a young boy with his older brother Ricky, who was sent back to the children's home when he was 12, leaving nine-year-old Murray completely devastated and confused. Eighty-seven-year-old Mark Chesterfield spent a large part of his childhood at a foundling hospital and has been trying to reclaim his identity ever since he found out at the age of 74 that he wasn't an orphan, as he'd always believed, but had a mother who'd wanted to be part of his life. Having traced her side of the family, he came to Long Lost Family to find out about his father's side.

The stories of two sons who were given up for adoption and the families who have stopped at nothing to find them. Andrew Barlow was adopted as a baby, but his birth mother Patricia Clark refused to sign the adoption papers and never gave up looking for him, while as a child, Julie Redman discovered that her mother Joan had given up her older brother for adoption.