The new series of ITV’s family history TV series, DNA Journey, has proved a hit since it started airing last week. The series is similar to Who Do You Think You Are?, but with its own twist on the format – rather than featuring one celebrity, a pair of celebrity friends trace their family history together, and they always take a DNA test as part of the research.
DNA Journey first started airing in 2019, with a one-off special featuring Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. It is now on series 5. The programme is sponsored by Ancestry, one of the world’s largest family history websites and DNA testing services, who also help with the programme’s research.
“It’s become a little bit part of my life,” says Brad Argent, the Ancestry expert who frequently appears on DNA Journey. “It has a wonderful familiarity about it. But the thing that I’m always surprised by is the impact that stories can have in ways that you don’t necessarily always expect it to. One of the things I love about making DNA Journey is we have an idea of the stories that we want to tell and the narrative arc that we’re going to follow. But we give ourselves room to move and go in different directions depending on how the talent react to what we tell them. And I love that it’s still got that freshness and that sort of dynamic nature to it.”
He says that he thinks DNA Journey is different from Who Do You Think You Are? because Who Do You Think You Are? looks for “big historical moments”, whereas DNA Journey looks for “big meaningful stories”: “It doesn’t mean we’ll ignore the bigger historical moments, but it means we’ll make room for and potentially shift our focus to stories that might have more meaning or impact for the celebrity.”
On DNA Journey, the celebrities are frequently surprised by the parallels between their lives and the lives of their ancestors. Brad says his favourite moment on the new series was working on Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston’s episode. Both Ricky and Sue have a passion for activism and social justice, and are surprised by how many of their ancestors tried to make the world a better place in different ways. At the end, Brad tells Ricky about discovering his remarkable relative, Jane Cunningham, a celebrated journalist and author in 19th-century America who spoke out for women’s rights at a time when very few women worked: “Everything melted away. All the cameras disappeared and everything, and it was just the three of us sharing a moment. And I loved that. But I think this is just generally true of anybody who does family history research for someone else. We’re often in a position where we are creating core memories for people, that they will keep with them for the rest of their lives. To be able to play a part in that is such an enormous privilege. The only difference between me doing that with a celebrity and me doing that with a non-celebrity is the existence of a camera.”
One of the unique features of DNA Journey is the use of DNA testing. Brad says he thinks testing can be a particularly powerful tool in uncovering people’s stories: “One of the things I love about a DNA test is as soon as you get your results back, you have a story. You have ancestral regions and ancestral journeys. Where in the world had my ancestors come from? What’s gone into making me? I think that is a great doorway into family history, because it triggers a curiosity in people. And then I think the ability to be able to match with other family can be really helpful. I’ve been able to connect with cousins in America I did not know I had. By talking to them, I was able to explain the disappearance of one of my great great uncles. We’ve all had those people that just seem to disappear from the census records. Well, he went to America and changed his name. And the DNA match made me realise that because I don’t have family in America, why would I look at American records? But there you go. Where I think it adds the most value is for people who know nothing. People who might be estranged from families, might be first or second generation immigrants who have lost access to records, people who were adopted or from single parent families. It can give insight in a way that recorded history can’t.”
However, he adds: “The DNA will never take anything away from you. I use this example all the time – if all your lived experience is as a Jewish person, even if you’re not religiously Jewish but you’re culturally Jewish, if your DNA results came back and said that there weren’t any markers for Ashkenazi Jews, you don’t throw all that tradition, all that culture away, because it’s shaped who you are. This is just telling you another side of who you are. Another part of your story. Most of the time, the DNA should match with the history, but there’ll be occasions when it doesn’t, but that’s OK.”
Indeed, the current series of DNA Journey has clearly shown this, with its most dramatic revelation. When actor John Simm appeared on DNA Journey with his Life on Mars co-star Philip Glenister, his DNA test revealed that his late father wasn’t his biological father. As John said on the programme, he was shocked, but his father would always be his real father to him.
The boom in DNA testing has also revealed a range of unexpected family secrets, from people making discoveries about their true parentage to finding siblings they never knew they had. What advice would Brad give to people whose understanding of their family is changed forever by the results of a DNA test?
“I think for anybody who feels uncertain about what the results are gonna be, it’s probably a good idea to have someone with you when you look at your results,” he says. “It’s always great to have a little bit of support in the room. And when you get the results, if they do show you something that’s really challenging, the best thing to do is to give it 24 hours. Take a beat and process it. Everybody’s reaction is different. Some people just want to dive in and go ‘Tell me everything right now’, whereas other people I’ve worked with have said ‘I’m not ready to process that’, and it’s taken them six months to get ready to do that. Everybody’s journey’s going to be different.”
He says that everybody, not just celebrities, will discover something exciting if you look into your family history: “Whenever I’m speaking to somebody about their family history and they say, ‘Oh, my family history is really boring’, I feel like, ‘You’re just not looking in the right places’. We always think those big stories belong to somebody else. But if you do the work, the story’s there.”