Who Do You Think You Are?

I cannot praise this show enough. It is a rare treat to see a celebrity do a piece without ego, but this show is heartfelt, funny, and moving in equal measures.

Some of the celebrity's are shocked by the revelations in their past. Stephen Fry finds himself in Aushwitz, Natasha Kaplinsky finds a Jewish massacre in Belarus, and Barbara Windsors family went through debtor jail.

Alistair Mcgowan finds himself in India, and John Hurt doesn't find himself in Ireland. And Nigella Lawson, Jeremy Clarkson, and Jane Horrocks find themselves related to Industrialists.

Fantastic and throughly engrossing series. 10/10.

The second series has been running for a few weeks. The series opened with Jeremy Paxman (for those who don't know him, he's very well known in Britain as the most hard-nosed, cynical, bullying, political interview around). He was most humbled by his family's less than spectacular background.

I am posting now because last night's show featured Stephen Fry (a highly intellectual speaker, presenter and comedian). He uncovered ancestors on his father's side who were in prison or a poorhouse, and probably dies of TB. Worse, he proved that some relatives on his mother's side had been murdered in Auschwitz, and that the only evidence of his family in Surany (now in Slovakia) is an old headstone in an often vandalised Jewish cemetery. This town was once a thriving Jewish community, but now has just one Jew, a remarkably upbeat old man.

Stephen Fry found a plaque an the wall outside a block of flats in Austria, which mentioned the names of former residents taken to Auschwitz. The plaque mentioned the names of members of Fry's family. This plaque, the run down cemetery, the discovery that his relatives had died in Auschwitz, and a letter written by the old man still living in Surany, all moved Stephen Fry (and me) to tears.

This was a brilliant programme.

Respect the privacy of the dead

This show talks about the private lives of generations of relatives. The show I watched yesterday in Australia about a woman who dug up the 3 marriage contracts of her great great grandfather just to be able to say and chuckle that "he was married 3 times" raises the issue about the privacy of the dead.

At present time, NSW laws do not allow people who are not party to the marriage to get copies of marriage certificates. But if they are 30 years old, anyone, not even those related to them can. There is here a certain irony.

Likewise from a certain ethical point of view, just because they are dead doesn't mean you can do whatever you like just because you can. If they were living, do you think those people would have allowed very distant relatives to pry into their lives, let alone dig up and get copies of their marriage contracts? Put yourself in the place of the dead. See how it goes.

Furthermore, Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides "Article 17 1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation."

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. "

Likewise, the OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data provides that "although national laws and policies may differ, Member countries have a common interest in protecting privacy and individual liberties, and in reconciling fundamental but competing values such as privacy and the free flow of information; ".

Sometimes its not what we want to do with other people's lives but its what they would have wanted had they been alive

We always knew that history was as much about ordinary people as about "the great and good", and the increased accessibility of British genealogical records has come to mean that everyone can check (and can afford to check) their family history in hours or days now, as opposed to the months or years it used to take. Genealogists of this new, far-wider category will be intimately aware how - as we go forward towards the middle of the 21st century, we are also - every last one of us - able to delve back in time to "create new history" - a particularly paradoxical and stunning reality of our times. A British format copied around the world (wherever records permit), "Who do you think you are?" has been both a product of the increased interest in genealogy and family history in the UK, and a major motor force behind the further development of this hobby-cum-obsession. Most people "want to know" - about who they are and where they came from, and the various celebrities that appear on the programme are mostly sufficiently interesting and sympathetic (in these most fundamental of circumstances at least) for us to care about their backgrounds. Indeed, it is virtually a rule that the family-history context portrays just about everybody in a positive/sympathetic light (even certain celebs one might otherwise have reservations about). We can't help our ancestors, we have to take the rough with the smooth, but we are a living part of that past heritage, while our ancestors are part of us - and in some ways this is a great leveller and a great conveyor of what it means to be human, and to feel human sympathy for somebody else. Hence emotion is never far below the surface in episodes of "Who do you think you are?", and this is a powerful incentive encouraging us to watch on. At the same time, we are given bite-size, but extremely helpful, incisive and skilfully abbreviated aspects of British (and therefore often also world) history, which makes cumulative watching of the series a vastly educational and also enfranchising experience, without it ever assuming a hectoring or lecturing or patronising tone. A great plus in this respect is the simultaneously warm and authoritative tone adopted by programme narrators David Morrissey, Mark Strong and Cherie Lunghi. While the featured celebrities do quite a lot of the talking/presenting themselves - alongside a vast pantheon of invited/consulted experts from every conceivable field, the very significant contribution to the overall product that the narrators make is not to be denied, and the potential educational impact of the programme is virtually limitless. This reflects the fact that it is mostly the history of society and of ordinary people that is highlighted - albeit firmly in the context of national or global trends and world events. Which shapes which is an interesting philosophical question, extremely well explored in what are now (as of 2015) no fewer than 12 series of this magnificent programme. Somewhere down the line, there is also a gently patriotic thread in there - but done with huge subtlety, indeed perhaps purely spontaneously, given that the United Kingdom HAS kept (most of) its people (and many incomers) safe for centuries, and HAS given them at least some chances to better themselves, as the series cannot help but show. There is no obvious reason why this format should ever run out of steam, given the fact that people and their background cannot fail to interest us as human beings, and given that there will always be new stories from history to be uncovered and told, as ostensibly dry documents are brought to vibrant life as stories from history in what is a synergistic and powerful combination of celebrities, talking heads, narrators, beautiful and often stunning or poignant visual images and sensitive music. There is a seamless whole here that is something rather unique in TV history. It would be so easy to distort or unbalance it, but so far the makers have managed to avoid that - and every possible credit to them for the landmark achievement.

I used to enjoy this, but I'm finding it increasingly irritating now we're on series 22.

The recent episode featuring Andrew Garfield is a good example of what's wrong with this programme. His great-grandparents were part of a large Jewish family living in Poland in the early 20th century. What could possibly have happened to them? Garfield has to pretend that he doesn't know. Fortunately he is an actor so he's able to play along with the programme-makers. WDYTYA has told this same story now at least a dozen times.

Standard well-known bits of history are presented as if they are news. Apparently Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Wow, who knew?

Any opportunity to criticise the UK via a biased view of history is eagerly grasped.

For example, the story of the Easter rising in Ireland is gone over again and again, always presenting Irish terrorists as valiant freedom fighters and the British as evil oppressors (most recently in the Aisling Bea episode).

Whenever there's a black individual doing the show (which of course is quite frequently - Layton Williams in the latest series) they go to Jamaica, and again, acting talent is required as they feign horror at the discovery that one of their ancestors was a slave.

Occasionally it's interesting, for example when some ancestor did something significant. But more often it isn't. It's just an excuse for emotional misery-wallowing and political opinion-pushing.