TV Critics: Who Do You Think You Are; The Flowerpot Gang; Death Camp Treblinka

“Now in its ninth series, Who Do You Think You Are? might lack the star power of the more recently launched US version, which untangles the lineages of the Hollywood elite such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Susan Sarandon as opposed to former Albert Square residents, but celebrity is hardly the point of the show.”
Gillian Orr, The Independent

“The problem Womack brought it was the problem I felt she faced in every episode of EastEnders she starred in: so much high-pitched overacting that overlooked moments of true drama”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“The problem of putting actors into this format is that they never stop acting.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“We know there are going to be whoops of joy and tears of sadness, as the production team has already done its research and eliminated any celeb whose ancestry is just too dull for television. So rather than going on a journey of discovery into the past with someone, it feels more like being led by the nose into a number of contrived set-pieces.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“While it was certainly for a good cause, I couldn’t help feeling a little short-changed that after 10 full days of gardening and building (as well being tuned in for a whole hour), the big reveal turned out to be little more than a highly functional yellow path and a gazebo. Boring!”
Gillian Orr, The Independent

“For now, it seems to tap perfectly into the national mood. Major spectacles such as the Jubilee and Olympics have given us a feeling that we’re all in this together, a sense, however brief, that we really are one nation.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“Over the course of the programme, the gang, along with some local volunteers, transformed the garden of a Sheffield care home for people with dementia into an accessible outdoor space, so it feels somewhat mean-spirited to be too critical. But it was a desperately dull hour of padded-out TV; the sort of programme that might just do as a Sunday afternoon filler, but had no place on a weekday primetime slot.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Perhaps the most disturbing footage, though, was the film shot by the Nazis themselves as a record of daily life in Treblinka – not for what it showed, so much as what it implied: that the Holocaust would one day be seen as something to be celebrated, not hidden.”
John Crace, The Guardian