DNA Family Secrets

[Marmaduke 123]

I felt very uncomfortable about the bearded man, and I really hope he had some counselling afterwards. His whole view of his family had been thrown up in the air - not only was his father not his birth father, but his mother had apparently had more than one extra marital affair. I hope the coincidence of the beards didn't influence the programme makers when they chose to use this case. I thought it was quite unethical to use it.

[Annie65115]

I suppose that when they choose the participants, they can't know at that point what the testing will show.

But I suspect that the bearded man would have stayed happier in a parallel universe where he'd never heard of DNA testing ----

[Familysearch]

Might have missed this - but what made the man think he was the biological father in the first place?

As it turned out, the two men got on well, but it could have turned so badly wrong.

Just trying to imagine how I would feel getting a communication like that out of the blue. What about the sister? (or half-sister) What happened to her?

FS

[andrewalston]

The format is pretty much the same as Long Lost Family on ITV. However they both have presenters who I hate (for different reasons).

Davina McCall (Long Lost Family) is far too gushing. "Look at ME! I'M the one doing ALL this! Make sure you get good footage of me EMPATHISING!"

Stacey Dooley (DNA Family Secrets) has a horrendous, grating, voice. She managed to tone it down considerably during her run on Strictly Come Dancing, but seems to have bounced back to an even more annoying level.

Wednesday sees the start of another "pre-planned genealogy" series, DNA Journey on ITV. Jamie Redknapp & Freddie Flintoff are the celebs in the first episode, wandering around in the same manner as Ant & Dec a couple of years ago.

[jc26red]

Nice though to see our subject covered on prime time TV. We are surely due some WDYTYA even if only repeats.

Tony.

BBC iPlayer is repeating  WDYTYA series 12-17 for the next 11 months if you get desperate 

Jenny

[antonymark]

Nice though to see our subject covered on prime time TV. We are surely due some WDYTYA even if only repeats.

Tony.

BBC iPlayer is repeating  WDYTYA series 12-17 for the next 11 months if you get desperate 

Jenny

Thanks Jenny,

I'm going to run out of lockdown to do things in! 

Tony.

[jc26red]

I know, could have done with this at the start of January when it was too cold to go out

Jenny

[LizzieW]

Might have missed this - but what made the man think he was the biological father in the first place?

I don't think that was mentioned.  Perhaps he just knew he'd had an affair around the appropriate time.  He might have been right, it seems the "son" and his sister didn't have the same father according to DNA, but it turned out it his father wasn't the man who started the hunt in the first place.

[jc26red]

What wasn’t explained was how they knew the first bearded man had a different father, surely it could have been his sister that had an unknown father. The DNA test clearly proved they had different fathers but it didn’t explain how they knew it was him and not her.

The programme was edited to give the assumption purely on the phone call the man received from the other bearded man’s father.

We know his sister must have matched with known cousins but the program skipped over that bit.