BBC "Who Do You Think You Are?" John Hurt (WDYTYA Series 4 Episode 2 )

[downside]

Just a reminder that it is on tonight at 9pm.  It sounds like he may be in for a few disappointments about who his ancestors are.

[Jayson]

I'm eagerly awaiting Tonight's episode which looks really interesting. I think John Hurt is disappointed to discover that he hasn't any aristocratic connections. 

Jayson

Moderator comment: Read the summary HERE

[kerryb]

Sounds like a good programme  and nice to see a bit of disappointment for once!!!!!  A bit more real 

Kerry

[mahees]

Jeez, he needs to get a sense of humour about it.
He should feel lucky to have all those newspaper clippings and photographs, I'd love to have all that info about my ancestors!
BTW why was that picture of his G-Grandma so familiar? Have I seen it on rootschat?

Erin 

[kerryb]

I was right, it was a good one.  A bit more like real genealogy (at least in my experience) 

Kerry

[Hackstaple]

The picture was exactly in the style of some pictures of Queen Victoria after she was widowed. Perhaps that is why it looked familiar.

[madpants]

It must be nice to have so much help in exploring family myths and being able to travel when and where you want to go to find out about them 

Discovering half of what he did would take most people years 

But I did enjoy tonights programme, you're right Kerryb it seemed more genealogical with less of the general padding 

[acceber]

I thought this was very poor, probably the worst episode i've seen.

What a waste of time the first half an hour was as he went on a wild goose chase on a 'suspicion' that his grt-grandmother was the illegitimate child of an irish marquis which turned out to be incorrect and the story had got distorted over time.

What a shame to only focus on 2 people (the said grt-grandmother and her husband) for the majority of the programme when he could have missed out on far more interesting stories in other branches of his family.

The BBC are just as much to blame for not providing help from a genealogist at the start, so John Hurt was chucked in at the deep end and came away extremely disappointed and wasted his time.

I wouldnt be suprised if WDYTYA lost a million viewers for that episode. If I wasnt already doing my family tree then that episode would put me off starting it rather than encouraging it.

acceber (apologies for all the negativity)

[mahees]

I agree acceber,
He could have saved us all half an hour if he's just gone and asked his cousin first.