Agreed. The programme producers are after all in the business of providing an entertainment of general interest to viewers - although you often hear on here " wouldn't it be nice if obscure Joe Soap from Dullsville (who might be my ancestor) was done instead of famous people", then that wouldn't be very likely to attract a huge load of viewers.
I think the reason that one hears so often about Parkinson's "boring ancestry" may well be because he didn't mind stating it! Perhaps there were loads of other boring families to famous people - but when they were rejected after the initial research, they didn't say what had happened?
I'd unusually, heard of most of this list, bar Anita Rani, before. I'm sure hers will be interesting. My personal peeve is, despite having some Irish ancestry myself, I get very fed up with the Irish ones, they always seem to show the same illustrations exactly of the poor crofters being evicted and the potato famine ... there seems to be a bit of a famine of alterative images, in fact ... or is that not really looking for any others?
It's a programme that can often annoy, you think "Why didn't they..." when they suddenly hop from one line to another, but I've often picked up one of those references in an idle moment, and pursued it myself for a bit, and there's usually a good reason, related to the dramatic dynamic of the programme. But it's good to have another series coming.
