Anyone watch who do you think you are?

I did and really enjoyed it. Besides the fact, that your genealogy can't be traced in an hour online, I do like the fact that they are taking us to the places and showing them looking through records. Its been pretty interesting so far.

Yeah, that is a great show-I forgot to watch it last nite however! On PBS Henry Louis Gates has a very similar show! When I work on my own family history I find myself wishing for the resources these shows have to get at some of the facts in my family tree! They call those brick walls & that is what they feel like when you butt your head against them for a while!

Family History is a fascinating endeavor & as these show demonstrate can yield some wonderful stories. 8^)

It was watching the original British show that reignited my interest in genealogy a few years ago. Since I live in Australia I find I haven't heard of many of the "celebrities" they have on the show, which does tend to reduce ones interest. I'm probably less likely to have heard of the American ones! There have been a couple of Australian series that have been really interesting - where every British celebrity that appears on the show appears to be descended from eastern European Jews, most Australians seem to be descended from convicts. Not that long ago people tried to hide that at the back of the closet, but these days its something to be proud of. My family arrived in Australia in 1963, so I have no convict ancestry! The most interesting Australian shows, though were about two aboriginal women. It was amazing what they were able to uncover.

#3 Agreed - it was when the show first appeared here in the UK that genealogy started to really soar as a hobby and those of us who had been poking around quietly for years got a sudden boost and renewal of interest. I missed quite a few of the early shows because they were about 'celebrities' who I found boring and uninteresting before I realised that almost everyone has an interesting story way back in their 'tree' and this show is great for unearthing them. Odd bits of it were annoyingly set up, of course (this is TV, after all) - there was one I remember well that had Jeremy Paxman (well known political interviewer and host of Universitry Challenge (one of the toughest TV quizzes ever) asking the presenter why on earth his family might have suddenly moved from the country to the town in the early 19th century. The idea that Paxman would not have known about the Industrial Revolution was just a step too dumb but I guess we all have to accept that that's just the way these things are done on TV. The important stuff was brilliantly done.

#4-too funny. Seriously, how could anyone not know about the Industrial Revolution! #3-Would love to see both of your series. Researching the aboriginals sounds fascinating. The episode this week showed an african-american and I was amazed how much they found. Slavery was not a good point in our history and record keeping didn't matter. As it stated in the show, the horses had books of lineage all the way back to England, but they didn't keep records of slaves. They were treated worse than the horses. I just can't even imagine. And unfortunately, most of my family is from the south so we fought on the wrong side of our war for slave freedom and probably owned slaves ourselves. Not too proud of that !

#2-I haven't seen the PBS show. I'll have to look into that!

#5 - a couple of the more interesting British programs have been about people of West Indian origin. From memory both of them found they had ancestors on both sides of the fence - slaves and slave-owners. A bit creepy, that. I agree with #4 that on occasions the subjects of these shows pretend not to know stuff for the benefit of the TV audience, but that's usually okay with me.

I've watched both the PBS show (called "Faces of America") and Who do you think you are. Both series are quite enjoyable, though I prefer the PBS one as having a bit more substance and less sensationalism. The only complaint I have is that is that both series can mislead a viewer into thinking one can easily find letters and other documents written by, or about, your ancestors. In fact, finding these documents is still very difficult! I'm not talking about just condensing the research to fit in a TV hour - these series have largely omitted any discussion of the research involved in discovering family history. Viewers will very likely think they can find everything on the Internet, or worse, that they can walk into a random library or archive and ask for all the documents their ancestor wrote. I wish I had a cadre of private researchers focused on my family like these celebrities clearly have!

On the other hand, these shows will prompt more people to walk into our libraries and historical archives. Anything that increases the visibility of this hobby - and improves preservation access for the historical materials that we rely on - is excellent.

I'd like to watch it but we don't have cable, don't want it. We watch everything we need on the internet (a cpu hooked up to our flat screen in the living room works great) so when it is available online I'll watch it.

#7-I agree. Wouldn't it be nice to have a team of experts helping us out? I'm hoping that many people will become interested and not discouraged that they can't find their answers in an hour

#8 - You are in luck both series are available on line. Check out pbs.org and nbc.com

#10 Ah than you, will watch some episodes and see what I think.

I've watched each one so far -- most of them online since I don't usually get home in time to watch on regular TV. I read somewhere in the program info that the experts spent a year working on the cases ahead of time. That makes more sense. Love the show, though. They're doing a good job of bringing out social issues of the times.

I haven't seen the original UK show yet. I found out recently that PBS has a lot of shows online so will check into that option.

My daughter is an archivist and was involved in quite a minor way with one of the UK shows which appeared on TV a couple of years ago. She was quite annoyed at how the hours of research get minimised on the programme, it is very misleading to beginners.