GOOD Queen Bess has one specific virtue to her credit which was noted in the first episode of David Starkey's Music and Monarchy (BBC2, Saturdays): what we now take for granted as the entire tradition of Anglican church music survived and developed thanks to her, personally.

While most of those who wielded power in Church and State longed for a thorough rooting out of anything that could be considered even slightly Catholic - such as choirs, music, and organs - and churches, cathedrals, and colleges were reduced to intoning doggerel Genevan psalms, she insisted that her Chapel Royal created a reformed professional English church music that carried on pre-Reformation levels of musical skill and complexity. Worse, she patronised and protected the two greatest 16th- century English composers, Tallis and Byrd, even though they were known recusants.

The prefacing of this documentary's title with the name "David Starkey", intended to whet the viewing appetite of middle England, has for me almost exactly the opposite effect: his somewhat hectoring tone leaves me cold. Here, however, he is absolutely terrific, telling a story that I suspect is largely unknown.

Although his avowed subject is music, this first programme was as much about religion itself. The most important component of Henry V's army on campaign in France, he averred, was its Chapel Royal: the canons and choir with full liturgical panoply, offering high mass daily to invoke God's blessing on their endeavour. The monarch's response to the great victory at Agincourt was to increase the size of his choir to an unheard-of 50 singers, and add more antiphons to their liturgy. His composer John Dunstable created new music that was admired and copied throughout Europe.

Henry VI founded Eton College as a huge chantry for the singing of masses for soul of his father; the Eton Choir Book records music of greater complexity than any known on the continent. Henry VIII refused to see the consequences of his destruction of the monasteries, thinking that his personal love of music would secure its liturgical survival; but Edward VI completed the logical task: colleges were closed, choirs disbanded, musical manuscripts burned or cut up.

This is no dry lecture: the musical examples are sung by the choirs that are the successors of those for whom it was originally composed, in the original buildings. Starkey has created a beautiful celebration of our heritage, and reminded us that its survival once hung by the slenderest thread.

There was a somewhat different take on the past in a new series, Family Tree (BBC2, Tuesday of last week). Tom is convinced that the impressive field marshal whose 1905 photo is left to him by his deceased great-aunt must be his great-grandfather, thus providing the self-respect that he so clearly lacks. In the event, his forebear was not the subject of the snap, but the photographer - and a Chinaman at that. This is a gentle comedy of failure and discomfort. It has the effect of making us, the viewers, feel that, in comparison, we are sorted out and normal.