'Who Do You
Think You Are?,' engaging
NBC series has celebs chasing down family histories
By Tom Conroy
Mar 5, 2010
The new genealogy series “Who Do You Think You Are?” has two big strikes going against it.
First, the series, which is premiering on NBC tonight at 8, focuses on the ancestry of celebrities, leading one to expect to see scenes of actors and actresses marveling modestly at how wonderful they are.
Second, it’s already been done: The Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates has hosted a series of PBS documentaries in which he told celebrities their genealogies
But “Who Do You Think You Are?” scores, paradoxically, by upping the celebrity angle. Whereas Gates’ documentaries simply showed him presenting the results of his colleagues’ research to the famous people, this series has the stars participating in their own research, traveling around the country and overseas.
Though the process sometimes comes across as a little fake, each episode gets progressively more interesting as the celebrities dig deeper into their past.
Viewers will find themselves rooting for the actress Sarah Jessica Parker as she first discovers that she has an ancestor who was involved in the Salem witch trials and then tries to learn the woman’s fate. The actress Susan Sarandon’s search for the grandmother who abandoned her mother feels like a detective story.
Brooke Shields learns that one side of her family suffered from poverty in Newark, N.J., then traces the other side back nearly a millennium in Europe.
Though one might expect that these journeys would come off as ego trips, the stars generally seem humbled by the accomplishments or struggles of their forebears.
Like many documentaries, the series features some location shooting that seems gratuitous. The actor Matthew Broderick goes all the way to Hartford, Conn., to sit down with an expert who simply logs on to a commercial genealogy web site (which happens to be NBC’s “official partner” on the series).
Most of the seven episodes scheduled to air this season provide some insight into American or world history. Broderick tries to find out what happened to an ancestor who fought in the Civil War. Both the director Spike Lee and the former football star Emmitt Smith attempt to the trace their lineage back to the days of slavery.
Assuming that families actually still watch TV together, “Who Do You Think You Are?” is good family viewing, although the episode in which the actress Lisa Kudrow (who’s also an executive producer of the show) learns what happened to a great-grandmother who died in the Holocaust contains descriptions that would be disturbing for young children.
On a less serious note, some of the celebrities’ reactions to their discoveries reveal a little forced enthusiasm. Smith expresses amazement at the fact that one book of records is numbered 22 — which was his number when he played football!
But the series generally keeps the sentimentality at an appropriate level, and viewers should be moved by the end of the hour. Considering that they’ll also have learned a little history, that’s time well spent.
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