When I turned it off after about 15 mins., I said to my wife that I felt that could hear TVs the length and breadth of the country doing the same. We don't seem to have missed much

I had to google her, anyway; , (ignoring Heartbeat, etc. I think I've only seem one thing she's been in, 7.39)

2 Pints of Lager & a Packet of Crisps is what takes up most of her screen acting career. She did that juvenile trash for 10 years (2001-2011). God knows why considering what a great actress and musical performer she is. Maybe that show to her was what My Family was to Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker i.e. a safe, steady, reliable well paid job whose poor quality your well aware of.

I've not seen tonight's episode yet, but this series I've been coming on here first to see if it's worth bothering with. The only one I've enjoyed so far has been Brian Blessed's one. The others have been dull. As another poster mentioned, maybe the budget cuts may be showing. I used to enjoy the old style episodes where they went back a few generations stopping at a few on the way. Maybe they should have a series every couple of years and have time to find some people with interesting ancestors!
At the same time, i recorded Castles in the Sky on BBC2, I hope that was more interesting!

It was mildly interesting and Sheridan seems like a nice person, but as others have said it wasn't an engaging enough story to fill a whole hour of prime time TV. If you're going to do that with just one ancestor then their story had better be enthralling and fascinating, Otherwise they'll have to fill the show with padding. As they seemed to with this; It felt like it had at least twenty minutes of Sheridan either learning and playing the banjo or gazing wistfully through a (hotel?) window at night.

Anyway, like you, and many others it seems, the only show this series I've really enjoyed and felt the story worthy of telling, is Brian Blessed. I do hope that they're saving the best til last.

The BBC only show the ones with people who are famous in the UK as well as in the US.

I'm trying to recall who we have left. Off the top of my head, I remember Reggie Yates, Twiggy, Martin Shaw and Mary Berry. I wonder if any of them will be related to God, like Matthew Pinsent was! I'll never forget that one!

From picturing the titles I think Billy Connolly's the other one.

I quite enjoyed it too and I am sure you are right about the BIB but the trouble is there was so much padding that obviously following not just one line but focusing on one person dosn't seem to be working either. Seeing her going to the banjo shop, getting her nails done, learning to play it and then playing it for her father were all totally superfluous and could easily have been spent going further back. It again felt like a 30 - 40 minute show s t r e t c h e d to an hour.

Ah yes, thanks.

I enjoyed that mostly because of Sheridan, to be honest, no doubt you lot will be moaning like F about it or her.
I don't need to read that so I won't bother reading tonight's posts.

I thought that she was lovely, a very warm and sympathetic person. However the story of her family, which is what the show is really about, wasn't that engaging. So rest assured nobody is moaning about Sheridan (not that you'll read this anyway ).

I would (I suppose) watch my absolute favourite actors/singer/whatever anyway regardless of the story but I don't have many of those these days, and anyway the story still has to be good to make the show watchable. Oddly, the most enjoyable shows are often people I haven't previously known that well or even liked, Brian Blessed's being a case in point.

I didn't. If you go back a page you'll see that I liked her..a lot. Just don't like the format of the new series, that's all.
The title of the show suggests that they are going back to discover the ancestry and roots of the guest, as they used to do. Concentrating on one ancestor doesn't do that.
This was another case of the ancestor being mentioned on the guest's Wiki page, which states that her great grandfather was a famous banjo player and even naming the group. But I suppose that could have been added since the programme was made.

Who's Reggie Yates?

It takes a bit of getting used to, this series.
As has been said, in the past you'd get someone wanting to know about their grandmother on their mother's side, or something, and then halfway through, they'd move onto their Dad's side of the family.
And they'd always go back to the beginning of time, almost!

Concentrating on one relative is a bit a boring, and could literally be done in half the time - as it was in the past, with the other half taken over with the other side of the family.

And yes, I'd only sit through an episode now if I liked the person. Like I did with Julie Walters. Love her to bits, but concentrating on one relative was a yawmfest.

I had no idea who he was, either, so I googled him to find out!


Reggie Yates (born 31 May 1983) is a British actor, television presenter and radio DJ, best known for his roles for the BBC in radio and television.

It has been discussed before, there might be a place for a programme tracing the family history of an ordinary member of the GBP but it is not going to get high viewing figures so likely to be tucked away on daytime TV. Wasn't it tried on one of the minor channels link to someone like FindMyPast but don't think it was a great success.

The early Who Do You Think You Are series were linked to programmes discussing how to trace your family history but I don't think they got particularly large numbers of viewers. Also you can only show someone looking up the census,BMD etc a limited number of times. There is loads of information around on how to trace your family history .

They've probably had bbc focus groups that have said just concentrate on one storyline, that's all today's viewers can concentrate on.

Yes, I can see your point. Unless you are tracing back a member of nobility, there's not much information avaiable about our ancestors anyway. Most people who do it as a hobby are excited to find any kind of recorded mention of their ancestors before the published census information. The fact is, most of our ancestors probably led dull lives, working long hours, for a pittance.
What you get then is another sort of padding..they find the subject's ancestor was a farm labourer, so they will spend ten minutes telling us what life was like for a farm labourer in the 18th/19th century. It becomes more of a history lesson than actually tracing the family tree.

I actually enjoyed this week's episode but I think it was because Sheridan was so lovely.

I also didn't think the story of her g-g-grandfather's rise and fall was particularly uninteresting but I agree it could have been covered it in half the programme as used to be the case. Whatever the story of her ancestors from her mother's side, surely they could have created some sort of story around them for us to watch in the second half of the programme.

For whatever reason there does seem to have been a change of emphasis this series and whereas in the past the subject's ancestors have been the stars of the show, they now seem to be making it more about the subject themselves by showing them learning to make ice cream or play the banjo.

More than her G Grandfather hitting the bottle, I would have been more interested in what caused him to be born in a workhouse. This series has been a dead loss (apart from the Brian Blessed one) and am seriously wondering whether to bother with the last five.

Shame really, as WDYTYA is the reason I started researching my own family tree, and has been must watch TV for me ever since.

I very enjoyed the show. Although it could be more interesting if they had more storylines, like they used to.

Lovely girl Sheridan.
Compared to last week's crap it was very entertaining.

Spot on. I really like SS but this was just awful.

The edit history on Wikipedia shows that this was added very recently and the reference given is an article about her episode of WDYTYA.

There can be a surprising amount of information available on 'ordinary people', you can pick up lots of details in old newspapers though all too often you just have the basic baptism, marriage, burial and censuses - you have to remember there is ten years between each census and a lot can happen in that time!

Often something like an occupation will lead to you wanting to find out more about it just as happens in the programme.