WDYTYA UK: Brian Blessed

The second subject in the new series of the BBC Who Do You Think You Are? was British actor and TV personality Brian Blessed.

Being able to watch without the annoyance of advertising continues to give pleasure.

This was the story of his paternal Blessed line and the descent of a journeyman bookbinder in London in the early 19th century who took a gamble moving to Portsmouth and being unfortunate enough to do so as the market for his services collapsed after the defeat of Napolean. Four family members ended up dying in the workhouse, two sons surviving but separated. The episode ended showing that the brothers, who both established themselves in businesses, were reunited.

Brian Blessed, a very much a larger than life character, has an imagination that enables him to build up an optimistic scenario for how things will develop, only to have it blown out of the water by the evidence, and then to bounce back again with another favourable scenario.