Last night's TV: Meet the Trumps (Channel 4), Revolting (BBC2)

Donald Trump could be seen as the ultimate genetic experiment

Journalist Matt Frei delves into Trump's family history (Channel 4)

Funnily enough, I've not yet had enough of Donald Trump, hard as he is to take. More than most politicians, TV stars and businessmen – and he is, after all, all three of those, itself a mesmerising sort of achievement – he has quite a back story. And it is irresistibly intriguing. Like slowing down on the motorway for a bit of rubbernecking or eating a KFC Streetwise Mega Box, you know it's not right, but you cannot stop yourself.

In Meet the Trumps, Channel 4 and journalist Matt Frei introduced us to the back story to the back story, and demonstrated that, like so many Americans, not so long ago the Trumps were penniless immigrants themselves. First, we met granddad Friedrich Trump, who came to America from Kallstadt in Bavaria in about 1885. He couldn't speak any English, but he was hard-working, smart and dedicated to making some money for himself and his family. He started out as a barber (maybe there is some sort of familial fascination in creative hairstyling among the Trumps), and went on to make a decent living out of running some rough hotels and bars for the gold diggers and good-time girls of the Wild West. He once apparently plonked a hotel on a promising plot of land he didn't even own. So real estate and chutzpah are also in the Trump genes. So, unbelievably, is a degree of beauty, for Donald’s Scottish mum, who also arrived in America from the Isle of Lewis as a poor migrant, was a striking-looking figure. I won’t labour the ironies about Trump and immigrants. A “trophy” bride who doesn’t interfere in the business seems to be the preferred choice for Trump menfolk.

Not everything in the Trump gene pool is a positive. We learnt that Friedrich’s weakness for strong liquor was one of his few frailties, though it seems to have been kept in some sort of check. Not so, tragically, for Donald’s elder brother Freddy, however, who, by all accounts, was just too nice a man to survive on planet Earth, let alone among the sharks of the New York business world. He finally died an alcoholic in 1981. The Donald, by contrast, doesn't drink.

The President-elect, as we all know, is a fighter who hates to lose and will do anything to win. He believes that “80 to 85 per cent” of anyone's life is determined by genetics, and, for good or ill, he seems to be living proof of that. And I now want to know even more about the remarkable gene pool that this phenomenon has emerged from. There must be plenty more material.

I had reasonably high hopes that Revolting would improve over its run and live up to the comedic promise of one of its early sketches – the “controversial” The Real Housewives of Isis. It has a good deal going for it – Jolyon Rubinstein, Heydon Prowse and their co-conspirators are excellent at spoofing the public and at getting the most from their sketches. Still, the series is more miss than hit so far. These mini-satires don't always hit their targets, though I will give Rubinstein maximum credit for hanging round the SNP conference pretending to be Tory boy James Twottington-Burbage and telling proud, but irony-free, Scots that they were just barbarians in dresses before the English turned up.

But the targets were just a bit too obvious, a bit too big, ironically enough – the Daily Mail, Labour's civil war, social media “slactavists”, hippies, Britain First, Swedes with hurdy-gurdy accents, and forced marriage. Revolting does have the potential, though, to parody a world that has almost gone beyond parody. The idea of Boris Johnson just being an actor in a suit playing a buffoon was also inspired, as was their simultaneous translation of a Theresa May speech into what she actually meant also proved. Like the PM, Revolting just needs better material.