I preferred this one to the Irish based ones, at least it did trace the family back through several generations, rather than studying just one individual.
I do think that all the programmes concentrating on one known fairly close ancestor (and it seems often telling the protagonist very little they do not already know) makes it a rather different programme from the format that most of us have enjoyed over the years- i.e.:Take a fairly well-known person, (one you don't know much about the private life of ) + explore their ancestry several generations back - possibly even on more than one line + colour in a bit of the social or personal background - fit it into a 1 hour format.
The Sheridan Smith one was interesting, agreed, a bit too much banjo, but it traced musical(?) links back through the generations, and fleshed out half-known stories, like the Blessed one, in the "good old way".
But I'd hate to lose the programme completely because of us all making these comments. It's not so much a "tired old format", as in need of a good think about who they use as subjects, people from Science, Musical, business, archaeological, natural history, writers (perhaps not) rather than "celebrities" could be more interesting - just listening to comments on last night's story on Paul Nurse on Radio 4 at present, now there would be a story, it occurs to me. It just needs a bit of a re-think on subjects, and a wider view of their ancestry.....
Perhaps Rootschat should send in a list of "possibles" to stimulate the thinking of the programme makers?
