Wall to Wall is delighted to announce that the long-running Who Do You Think You Are? has won the 2018 Broadcast Award for Best Popular Factual Programme.
On the night of the ceremony Executive Producer Colette Flight accepted the award and was joined on stage by fellow WDYTYA? team members Anna Kirkwood, Helen Nixon and Stella Sims, as well as Chief Executive Leanne Klein. In the Awards brochure, Broadcast wrote:
"Wall to Wall’s BBC One genealogy show is one of the best-established formats on British television (now 14 series and counting) and this award is recognition of both its continued excellence and a creative high point in its own right: the episode in which Danny Dyer uncovered his royal lineage. The judges felt the series was popular history at its best, with one describing it as “brilliantly uplifting”. Another ladled on the praise for this episode: “It was surprising, funny and unmissable.”
They weren’t wrong. Dyer kicked off the episode by explaining that he hoped to discover a family history that “freaks a few people out”. By the end he was coming to terms with his discover that he is a direct descendant of King Edward III.
There was plenty of drama along the way. Dyer’s vising to Helmingham Hall, the ancestral seat of the Tollemaches in Suffolk, was just one of the standout moments. The EastEnders actor was on fine form meeting his distant relative Lord Tollemache and struck up a great rapport with historian Tracy Borman, a biographer of another of Dyer’s famous relatives, Thomas Cromwell.
Add in a final scene in which a herald from the College of Arms took Dyer to Westminster Abbey to show him the tomb of his royal ancestor and you have a show that delightfully confounded expectations.”
