Who Do You Think You Are?

I loved Shannon's episode of Who Do You Think You Are, since it was so real. I have Irish family I'd love to locate and to see her chance, it was amazing. Love her even more now.

If you're a person who's interested in seeing where people came from and what made them what they are today then this is definitely the show for you.

The show focuses on a different celebrity each episode whether if they're an actor, musician or athlete. You have them go around the country and sometimes the world looking up birth certificate, death certificates or whatever to find out what took place in the earlier generations of your family. A lot of times the ancestors of these celebrities were involved with some fairly significance moments in history.

Not the best show ever but it's an interesting watch for an hour at a time.

This show was first shown on NBC for 3 seasons, and is now continuing on TLC. I'm happy that they're continuing without much decline in the production value. I doubt it costs much, and the most important ingredient are the celebrities.

Each episode, one celebrity investigate his/her ancestral history usually concentrating on something they're interested in. That's really the only rub I have against this show. The celebrities could certainly hide things they don't want to air in public. But most importantly, they might be interested in a really boring ancestor.

That doesn't happen a lot. Most of the discoveries are quite fascinating. Not only does it reveal personal history, but sometimes it reveals little known world history events. It brings the past worlds to life in the most personal ways.

Humans love stories, and this show does an excellent job of using television to tell the stories of real people, without being maudlin or mawkish, or throwing them into contrived situations for comic or dramatic effect.

While we are dealing with the ancestors of a very select group of people (after all, how many would watch a show about *my* family tree?), the stories they tell are the stories of all of us: the former German POW who loved his time in an Iowa POW camp so much he came back to the U.S. after WWII. The story of a family torn apart by alcoholism and abuse. The story of people fighting for justice, sometimes at the risk of their own lives.

To get stories told this well, I am willing to put up with the heavy handed references to ancestry.com, and the smiling, infallible librarians and archivists who seem to always have just the right document.

Lisa Kudrow was great in "Friends" but I think this is the show should should put at the top of her resume

This is one of the better "reality-based" shows on network TV since it has to do with learning about yourself and where you originally came from, but not the best.

Since celebrities are used in each episode, this show needs more diverse people to discuss their genealogy with. There are approximately 10 episodes per season and out of all of the episodes, only ONE person depicted is non-white. We live in a melting pot of ethnicities, and there are hundreds of actors that are non-white that have fascinating genealogy stores to be told.

"Finding Your Roots" on PBS is MUCH more diverse in who's history to follow whether they are black, hispanic, Jewish, or homoesexual. Check your local PBS stations of when it will air. Generally "Finding Your Roots" starts airing in Sept. It's more worthwhile to watch.