Family tree programme branches out to the US

You could say that television is a great educator but often viewers are learning stuff they never need to know.

For instance, we now know a lot more about the actor Matthew Broderick’s ancestoral background – and indeed his wife’s, Sarah Jessica Parker – than we probably do about our own family trees.The UK format was the first version of Who Do You Think You Are? that I saw on the BBC a few years ago and last year RTE did a mini version where Ryan Tubridy discovered he had connections to the English Royal family!

I was surprised that well known American personalities, most of them actors it has to be said, agreed to go through such a private process before the cameras. No doubt, there’s an agreement with the programme producers not to allow anything too embarrassing to come out as it is obvious from this format anyway that the research is done well in advance, although whether the participating guest knows the outcome or not until it is revealed to them on camera is hard to say, as they are mostly all actors, as I said.

SJP was definitely more animated on the programme (the series is currently being shown on RTE 1 on Thursday nights at 10.15pm – this week is Lisa Kudrow of Friends fame) than her husband was in this week’s edition, where he came across as nice but boring.

But what is noticeable about the American version of the series is the access to archives and that they have such incredible archive material for a country so young. Hey, we have only two years done in an old census, whereas they appear to have had them all computerised, going back to the Civil War even.

It was the English who started the census in this country, so it’s probably thanks to them as the early rulers of the US that its citizens now have access to so much data.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.