Who Do You Think You Are?
2004
📺 22 Seasons
🎬 185 Episodes
📅 Returning Series
🌐 EN
⏱️ 60 min/episode
DocumentaryFamily
A British genealogy documentary series in which celebrities trace their ancestry, discovering secrets and surprises from their past.
Seasons
Season 1
Bill Oddie is the first celebrity to undergo the family tree search, as he endeavours to find out more about his mother, who was institutionalised when he was a child.
Season 2
The stern host of BBC2's Newsnight searches for his roots.
Season 3
Barbara roots extend through East London and Suffolk.
Season 4
Natasha travels to Cape Town in search of information about her father's involvement with the anti-apartheid movement during the 1960s. Later, after researching a possible connection with King George the Third, she travels with her Australian cousin Benni to Belarus where some disturbing discoveries are made about the persecution of her Jewish ancestors.
Season 5
Patsy's late father was a villain. Jimmy Kensit was deeply involved with the most notorious gangsters of 1960s London: the Krays and the Richardsons. Reggie Kray was even godfather to Patsy's brother. Apprehensively, Patsy embarked on an investigation into her father's murky past, to understand the roots of his criminality and to discover how far back 'the family trade' goes.
Patsy met up with a criminologist who had unearthed a copy of her father’s criminal record, revealing the true extent of his crimes. She was then shocked to uncover documents in the National Archives that show her grandfather was also a prolific criminal. After more research, Patsy was at last relieved to discover that her great-grandfather, though impoverished, was an honest walking stick maker.
Tracing her roots even further back, an amazing document in Goldsmith's Hall revealed how the Kensit family, once affluent artisans, first fell into terrible poverty. Ultimately Patsy made the emotional discovery that rather than descending from a long line of villains, one of her ancestors was a remarkable vicar who dedicated his life to helping the poor.
Season 6
In Holland and Germany, Rory Bremner delves into the wartime experiences of the father he didn't know very well.
Season 7
Bruce Forsyth receives a letter from America from a woman who claims to be related to Bruce through Bruce's great-grandfather, Joseph Forsyth Johnson. The letter suggests that Joseph Forsyth Johnson was married to two women at the same time and that he died at sea. Bruce is determined to investigate these claims and discover the truth for himself.
Season 8
During her search to find out if she is a real EastEnder, June unravels her Jewish heritage, and discovers how momentous historical events shaped her family's destiny, forcing them to migrate across Europe.
Season 9
Samantha Womack is best known for playing Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders. Sam's parents separated when she was young, and she grew up with only a fractured sense of her family history. Sam starts her journey by looking into the military career of her great grandfather, Alexander Cunningham Ryan.
Season 10
Una Stubbs never got the chance to meet her paternal grandparents and learns that they didn't die until she was in her 20s. She manages to uncover a story of illegitimacy and poverty.
Season 11
Bafta-winning actress, Julie Walters of Educating Rita, Mamma Mia! and Harry Potter fame, traces her roots back to County Mayo in western Ireland, where her great-grandfather, Anthony Clark was one of the first members of the Land League. The organisation was formed in 1879 and campaigned for more than 40 years for the rights of tenant farmers to own their own land.
Season 12
Paul Hollywood looks into his family's past this week. His journey takes him first to North Africa where his grandfather had only just completed his training when he found himself in Tunisia as part of the Light Anti-Aircraft division tasked with protecting infantry from enemy air attack during a major Allied offensive to take Tunis from the Germans. He then makes his way to Italy where he learns his grandfather was part of the landing force that became surrounded by German forces and trapped on the beaches at Anzio for four months.
Season 13
EastEnders actor Danny Dyer hopes that he will 'freak a few people out' with his family history. Danny sets out to discover the history of his tough working-class family in the East End of London, but in the process he unearths an extraordinary lineage stretching back to the Norman conquest.
Season 14
Actor Charles Dance has made his name playing aristocrats, including Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones. But the upstairs world Charles inhabits on screen is nothing like his own background as his mum was an under house parlour maid. Charles wants to know if he comes from a long line of servants or if he can uncover some grander origins.
He is also determined to learn about his dad, who died when Charles was four. Charles knows hardly anything about him, not even when he was born. Charles's search for information takes him to the other side of the world to meet close relatives he never knew he had.
Season 15
Our Girl actress Michelle Keegan uncovers some exceptional women on her family tree. On her mother's side Michelle discovers that her Gibraltarian great-grandmother Leonor had to up sticks when all women and children and the elderly were evacuated from harm's way in Gibraltar to the apparent safety of London during the Second World War, a month before the start of the Blitz.Further back, Michelle discovers her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Kirwan living in poverty in Manchester at the start of the 20th century. Michelle unearths a special connection to suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and her great-great-grandmother's commitment to the cause that put her name on the electoral roll - voting for the very first time in 1918.
Season 16
Sixteenth series of the BAFTA-winning series
Season 17
Doctor Who actor Jodie Whittaker finds out how her great-great-grandfather worked his way up from child labourer in a Yorkshire coal mine to mine owner.
Season 18
Comedian Josh Widdicombe embarks on a rollercoaster ride through his extraordinary family history. After a less than promising start with an ancestor who was cut out of the family fortune, Josh is delighted to discover a courtier with very personal access to King Charles I. From there it’s a dizzying journey back to Elizabethan and Tudor nobility by way of a royal love triangle, through an incredible ancestral line that prompts Josh to ask the expert he meets, 'Be honest. As a historian, are you really jealous?'
English
Season 19
Sue Perkins delves into the German branch of her family, uncovering a harrowing tale of refugees fleeing back and forth across east European borders during the Second World War.
Season 20
Andrew Lloyd Webber is astonished to uncover stories from his family’s history that uncannily parallel his own life, including an ancestor with a famous cello-playing brother!
Season 21
Stars delve into their family history to find moving, funny and extraordinary stories.
Season 22
Worthy of a film plot line, Andrew Garfield’s family history takes him from Nazi-occupied Poland to early Hollywood glamour as he uncovers stories which veer from tragedy to hope.
Crew
Producer
Colette Flight, Lucy Swingler
Network
BBC One, BBC Two
Production
Wall to Wall
Keywords
celebrityancestrygenealogy