Denise Scott was a reluctant genealogical traveller the first time around, declaring a complete lack of interest in her lineage on the 2020 season of Who Do You Think You Are? But when Shaun Micallef came knocking for his looser version of the format, Scott thought it was time to have another crack, and maybe mend a fence with her former Vega FM co-host.

Not that the pair were the Kyle and Jackie O of mid-noughties Melbourne radio. But, failing to gel on air, they’d avoided each other ever since. Travelling to the medieval town of Goslar in Germany, to research Scott’s missing maternal line, they reconnected over wurst, silver mining and yodelling.

“Shaun and I are awkward with one another, at the best of times,” says Scott. “On the radio, we were on different planes. I’d be talking about my partner John’s farts and Shaun would be talking about aliens arriving in ant form … So walking into Goslar together, and there’s the mountains and there’s the cathedral with the bells ringing and the cobblestones … And having nonsensical banter in the most beautiful place in the world, I loved it.”

This second season of Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey also features Pia Miranda, Tony Armstrong, Kate Langbroek, and Matt Okine, Scott’s co-star in the ABC reboot of the Ruth Cracknell-Garry McDonald sitcom Mother and Son, which has ended after two seasons.

“I’m relieved I won’t have neighbours in the street going, ‘Oh, I like you, Denise, but you’re no Ruth Cracknell’,” she says, laughing. “I do think the show was great. But there was that shadow … Even my oncologist was absolutely horrified. Not about my cancer, about the fact that I was doing a remake of Mother and Son.”

She filmed Origin Odyssey a year after her treatment for breast cancer.

“I was uncertain as to whether I could do it, physically, because it’s a really tight turnaround,” she says. “You fly to Frankfurt, start filming as soon as you get off the plane, and then you’re up early for five days, and then you’re back on the plane to Melbourne.

“It was kind of easy in that I really respect Shaun. I think what he does is brilliant, and I suspect that he might have some respect for me. And we talked non-stop. He was very into talking caringly about my cancer. Actually, it would get funny at times, but he was interested and very empathetic.”

In Goslar, Scott learnt about her maternal great-great-great-grandfather, Carl Boch, a miner who migrated to Australia. This branch of her family tree had remained unclimbed, out of respect for her late mother Margaret, the source of much of Scott’s stand-up material. (Scott’s now back on the road with a limited tour of her Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, Tickety Boo.)

Scott isn’t sure what Margaret would have made of her discoveries in Germany. But the past few years have prompted her to rethink her assessment of her mother’s life as “tiny”.

“When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was sitting in the hospital and I looked out the window in Heidelberg – in Melbourne, not Germany – and I could see the school I went to, the train line that I travelled on till I was 18,” she recalls. “I saw the church where my parents were married. I saw the small hospital where my dad died, and the road that you travel on to get to my house that I’ve lived in for the last 45 years.

“And that’s when I thought, ‘F---, my life is small! Why did I ever think it was big?’ In my own head, I thought it was quite an amazing, edgy, big kind of life. And I realised it’s tiny. And then [I thought about] my mum, who I did criticise for having a tiny life, and I realised, ‘No, she just had a life she liked, and she had a garden, and she had her friends and, gosh, it was very, very similar.’”

Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey returns at 7.30pm on Tuesday, August 18, on SBS and SBS On Demand.

Want more TV? We’ve got you.

• Newsletter:Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
• August streaming guide:All the exciting new shows to watch this month.
• Robert Irwin- :He’s nominated for a Gold Logie and he’s hosting the awards, but can the 22-year-old make the Logies cool again?
• Exit interviews:The winners of- Race Around the Worldand- MasterChef Australiatalk about their biggest challenges and their favourite judges.
• 120 movies to watch right now:Don’t miss our guides to all the best movies to watch on Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video and Stan (which is owned by Nine, publisher of this masthead).
• Watch:Deputy TV editor Meg Watson on what’s worth adding to your list right now.