16 August 2012

WDYTYA: Samantha Womack

The first in the new BBC series of Who Do You Think You Are got underway on Wednesday evening with personable actress Samantha Womack pursuing the stories of two of  her father's ancestor, both of whom it turned out had black marks against their names.
In addition to the inevitable shots of people sitting in front of computers, true reality for much searching these days if not fascinating television, there were visits to a large number of archives and similar institutions in the UK and US.  Included was the Society of Genealogists where Else Churchill was the expert. After an obligatory few seconds of searching with Samantha, Else made it clear a large amount of research had been done beforehand by reaching for a folder with copies of key civil registration certificates.
I was pleased to see the value of newspapers reinforced in that they proved to be key records in both cases.
The program was spoiled by a couple of leaps of logic that I failed to follow, or maybe I just blinked; not likely to disturb the average viewer but aggravating for the genealogist looking to understand how the case was built.

No comments: