We reveal WDYTYA? stories

It’s here at last! Ranging from the Huguenots to the Holocaust, series 15 of Who Do You Think You Are? is a must, says Jonathan Wright

Following the early broadcast of an episode featuring Our Girl star Michelle Keegan’s discovery of a family connection to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, the 15th series of Who Do You Think You Are? arrives on BBC One in full from July.

Once again, the elements that make the show such compelling viewing are front and centre as the episodes offer up surprises, laughter and tears, and clues from the experts about where to go and what to do to take your own research further. It’s a series that introduces a panoply of reallife historical characters, ranging from a frontline comedian to a slaver, and takes us as far afield as multiracial Cape Town and colonial Kolkata.

“The possibilities are endless,” says series producer Sarah Feltes, when Who Do You

Think You Are? Magazine quizzes her about the show’s success and longevity. “We can come again to a similar bit of history, but because we’re coming at it through the story of an individual, it’s always a new telling.”

That said, different series of the programme often seem to have recurring themes. This time around travel features prominently, such as when actor Olivia Colman, soon to star as Elizabeth II in Netflix’s The Crown, discovers her forebears hail from further afield than her native Norfolk, and her research takes her to India. Here the crew, having packed for the tropics, encounter the opposite of a heat wave: a cold wave.

“We put on all of the clothes we had with us and gathered together in one bedroom, sitting under a huge blanket,” recalls director Mary Cranitch. “As we shivered, the cameraman came up with the idea of making hot water bottles by filling mineral water bottles with hot water from the kettles. They worked a treat. We put several in our respective beds, and they got us through the night!”

Turn over to learn more about the celebrities and their remarkable families.