Stranger than fiction
20 years of genealogical journeys have produced some jaw-dropping TV. Exec producer Colette Flight takes up the tale…
- Amy Raphael
Colette Flight has never investigated her own family history. “I wish I could find the time,” she says, laughing. It’s deeply ironic considering her day job, because she is the executive producer of Who Do You Think You Are?
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The series has remained relevant, she says, because it has such a strong idea at its core. “It hasn’t changed too much, either – we’re still watching our favourite celebrities go on genuine voyages of discovery.”
Who Do You Think You Are? might have fundamentally stayed the same over 20 series, but the “game changer” has been the digitisation of newspapers across the UK. “When the show started, a researcher would need a whole day to search for something that can now be accessed very quickly. However, there are also records that are only held in archives, so our team will have to go in person and scour through them for hours on end. Luckily our amazing team of researchers are very skilled detectives.”
Who Do You Think You Are? exec producer Colette Flight accepts a Bafta in 2017 Getty
Asking Flight – who became series producer in 2009 and executive producer in 2014 – for her favourite episodes elicits a long, amiable sigh simply because there are so many to choose from. “I love the 2023 episode with [former Strictly dancer] Kevin Clifton,” she says. “He comes from Grimsby and there was a rumour in his family that they had indigenous Canadian ancestry, but he thought it was unlikely. It turned out he has an ancestor from the First Nations of Canada, and he saw a photo of his five-times great-grandmother, Matooski. He was astonished.”
One of the first celebrities Flight worked with was the Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall, who was born in Liverpool and whose maternal grandfather walked out on his wife and three young daughters when Kim’s mother was just eight years old.
The stories are so improbable they’d make great TV drama
Colette Flight
“That was the first time we ever told a single story in an episode. It was a proper detective story because, after walking out, her grandfather was never heard of again. Kim’s motivation was so strong and personal because it had really impacted her mum and her aunts. It was a very twisty, turny tale and Kim finally discovered that her grandfather was a bigamist who moved to Australia. She finally had answers, even if they weren’t the answers she hoped for.”
Flight says that the programme, which won its two best features Baftas (in 2017 and 2019) during her stewardship, has, over the years, inspired the public’s apparently insatiable thirst for genealogy simply because “everyone, whether they are a celebrity or not, is always going to find out incredible, difficult and inspiring things about their relatives”.
The fact that the series deals with universal themes we can all relate to is, Flight adds, the key to its enduring success. “Family trees are what shape us and, therefore, what shape the nation.” And, of course, the truth is often stranger than fiction. “Yes! The stories we uncover are sometimes so improbable we often say they’d make great TV drama.”
Danny Dyer
Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
In one of the most eye-popping episodes of all time, the EastEnders actor discovered that he has an incredible family tree. Not only did it turn out that Thomas Cromwell — Henry VIII’s right-hand man — was his 15-times grandfather, but Dyer is also descended from Edward III, his 22-times great-grandfather. When Dyer went back to the resting place of Edward III, he was told that his ancestral line can be traced back to William the Conqueror.
Dame Judi Dench
BBC
In one of the most spine-tingling episodes, the great Shakespearean actor discovered that her Irish six-times-great grandfather married a woman from Copenhagen in the late 17th century. Her ten-times great-aunt was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Denmark. And — here’s the goosebump moment — that same relative worked at Kronborn Castle in the town of Helsingor. Or, in English, Elsinore, the name of the castle in Hamlet.
Alex Scott
BBC/Wall to Wall Media Ltd/Stephen Perry
Alex Scott was devastated to discover that one of her ancestors, of mixed heritage and on her father’s side, owned slaves. Meanwhile she also found out that her maternal grandmother’s family were Jewish immigrants from Russia and that her great-grandfather was involved in the Battle of Cable Street, in which protesters blocked a fascist march in London’s East End in 1936.
Sir Ian McKellen
David M. Benett/Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images
The actor, LGBTQ rights activist and co-founder of Stonewall was told that his great-great-uncle was a successful professional actor in Manchester, while his great-great-grandfather Robert Lowes was a warehouse clerk and a director of the Salford Lyceum, which offered local workers the opportunity to further their education. Lowes campaigned for workers to be given Saturday afternoons off work, eventually leading to the creation of the weekend (Lowes is now widely regarded as the grandfather of the modern weekend).
Sir Matthew Pinsent
Getty Images
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The Olympic gold medallist told the show, “I’d love to find a rogue, or find someone who broke the mould, or a complete maverick.” What he hadn’t expected was royal ancestry. Researching his mother’s great-grandfather, he found he is descended from Edward I, and, much like Danny Dyer, from William I.
Authors
Amy Raphael
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