Daniel Radcliffe to feature on Who Do You Think You Are? (UK) - Monday 22 July 2019

[Dumbledore]

The date for the first episode of Who Do You Think You Are? 2019, starring Daniel Radcliffe, has been revealed!

 

Muggles set a date in your diaries, Monday 22 July 2019

 

 

The first episode following Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe’s quest to uncover his family history.

The episode, which will be broadcast at 9pm on BBC One on 22 July, will see Radcliffe discovering one ancestor who became a successful Hatton Garden jeweller before meeting a tragic fate, and another who wrote moving letters from the front line of the First World War.

 

The Harry Potter actor’s relative Samuel Gershon had been ruined by a robbery at the family’s Hatton Garden jewellery business in 1936.

 

Prejudiced police accused the Jewish businessman of faking the raid to claim insurance cash. So, destitute and shamed, Sam took his life aged 42.

An emotional Daniel says: “Everything he had worked for and that his father had worked for, has sort of been destroyed.

 

“You want to just reach into the past and just go ‘whatever you’re going through, you have so much to offer the people who are around you still . . . you have so much to give to them.

 

JARRING

 

“And, they still would all have loved you’.”

 

Daniel doesn’t rule out that his great grandfather could have faked the robbery, though there was no proof. The Harry Potter star is shocked by the prejudice police showed after learning about his family on Who Do You Think You Are?

 

Tragically, the insurance company eventually paid the claim — but only after Sam’s suicide. With a backdrop of rising British fascism under Sir Oswald Mosley, there was strong evidence detectives were anti-Semitic and reluctant to properly investigate the crime. A police report said: “Jews are so frequently responsible for the bringing down of their own business premises.” Daniel, whose family descended from Russian and German immigrants, though he was raised an atheist, is shocked by the prejudice.

 

Series 16 of the popular family history show will continue with seven more episodes, starring A-lister Kate Winslet, international media personality and music mogul Sharon Osbourne, James Bond star Naomie Harris, comedian and Have I Got News For You captain Paul Merton, television personality Mark Wright, comedian Katherine Ryan, and comedian Jack Whitehall together with his father Michael Whitehall.

 

Colette Flight, executive producer at WDYTYA? production company Wall to Wall, said: “We’re delighted to have this incredible line-up of stars and to have captured these journeys of discovery as they explore their extraordinary family trees.”

 

Source:
The Sun & BBC