When the original Wall to Wall produced series screened on the BBC, it was a breakout success. In its fourth season the series was viewed by over 6.8 million people in the United Kingdom, and it inspired millions to research their own family tree.

The season will commence on SBS television on Sunday, December 2 with six episodes from the UK series before the premiere of the six SBS commissioned Australian episodes beginning on Sunday, January 13, 2008.

Throughout the eighteen episodes each celebrity embarks on a highly personal journey to discover their own family’s past and its role in who they are today. The SBS commissioned episodes follow six unique Australians as they look to their own roots to explain who they are and how this fits with their view of what it means to be Australian.

This series offers an alternative way of looking at the history of modern Australia – showing the development of a nation from six uniquely personal perspectives while allowing us to share their private stories. For this reason each celebrity has been chosen so that their journey unlocks a different theme in Australia’s development as a nation.

“Every Australian has an intriguing genealogy that in one way or another has contributed to the history of our country. Who Do You Think You Are?® offers a captivating personal look at the origins of Australians and Australia through the eyes of noted personalities. Film Australia, with Serendipity Productions in Sydney and Artemis International in Perth, are extremely proud to have produced this landmark series for SBS," said Film Australia CEO Daryl Karp.

SBS Managing Director, Shaun Brown said, “SBS is proud to bring this extraordinary genealogical detective series to Australian audiences and to be part of such a successful phenomenon that has inspired millions of people in the UK to explore their family history.”

About the Making of the Series

What mysteries are hidden in old family photographs? Can old documents reveal secrets, long forgotten by family members? What role does family history play in our daily lives? Can a person know who they really are?

Who Do You Think You Are?® is a landmark documentary series chronicling the social, ethnic and cultural evolution of our national identity through the personal family histories of prominent Australians.

Developed and first produced by a British production company, Wall To Wall Television, the format has been a hit since it premiered on the BBC in 2004, inspiring millions of Britons to research their family trees. Margie Bryant of Serendipity Productions saw the first episode when it screened in the UK and some months later she and Perth-based executive producer Brian Beaton of Artemis International together optioned the rights as a co-production. Film Australia came on board as the main investor and production partner with all players working closely with the local network investor SBS Independent and WA state investors ScreenWest and Lotterywest to shape the series.

Although based on a deceptively simple idea, making the series involved months of research and planning, with each celebrity carefully cast so that their personal journey unlocked a different theme in Australia’s development as a nation.

“It’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done,” Bryant says. “The whole signing up of celebrities was really difficult because even if they had an interest in the idea, the amount of time we were requiring was more than most of them took for their annual holidays.”

When they began the process of casting, the producers contacted hundreds of potential subjects. Depending on the travel commitments required to tell each story, the six people chosen to take part in the series – each a successful and busy Australian – had to commit up to three weeks to film their episode. “They had to be passionate about being part of the program because it was a considerable commitment that we required,” says series producer Celia Tait, of Artemis International.

“They were all very brave to take part because they had no idea what we might find. But they were supported along the way and they were told that if there was anything they knew about that they wanted to avoid, then we could work around that. Mostly they’d say, ‘Oh I don’t think you’ll find anything very interesting in my ancestry’.”

Making the series was an enormous collaborative venture with producers and executive producers working in Perth and Sydney. The logistics – juggling time-zone differences, couriers and frequent travel – made it a complicated undertaking. The shoot teams were relatively small – consisting of a field director, sound recordist, director of photography, assistant producer/producer and the subject. Rushes from around Australia and the world were brought back to Perth-based post-production directors who shaped the edit.

Add to that a research team, led by Robyn Smith, working for up to four months on each of the stories, tracking leads in Germany, Italy, the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand and the Philippines. On several occasions, promising research trails simply stopped dead and had to be abandoned. “You basically start with the name of a celebrity and perhaps the name of their parents, and from that you must find 52 minutes of rich, interesting history and personal story,” Tait says.

“It’s terrifying, really, because you have no idea what you will find. It has some comparisons with the process of making natural history, where you have a cameraman down a ditch or up a tree for months on end waiting for an animal to return to its burrow and just hoping that tonight will be the night that you strike gold,” she says. “With this series, you have lots of balls in the air, but you never know where a trail might end. Then every now and again you find a nugget – a birth certificate or a death certificate or some piece of the person’s history that develops a story and makes it all worthwhile.”

As well as the professional help the production team received from national and state archival bodies, they also were grateful for the support of an extensive family of genealogists and amateur historians, “people who work in tiny cupboards, often for no money, in the middle of nowhere”. Many of these people appear in the show.
The executive producer for Film Australia, Penny Robins, says the resulting series is worth the hard work and long hours.

“What this format offers is an innovative and fresh approach to telling history stories,” Robins says. “It’s a very important project for Film Australia. It’s an absolutely natural fit for the National Interest Program, it’s a project that reflects on our recent and distant past, it provides a broad spread of history that we haven’t previously been able to encapsulate, and it also takes in popular culture, which adds a new dimension. It ticks all the boxes. I think this is a very good addition to Film Australia’s collection.”

Thanks to the WDYTYA cast, producers, researchers, production team, historians and archivists around the world who helped in the making of this series.

WDYTYA is a Film Australia National Interest Program, Serendipity Productions and Artemis International production in association with Screenwest, Lottery West, and SBS Independent.

Format devised by Wall to Wall Media Ltd and based upon a programme originally produced in the UK by Wall to Wall Media Ltd. www.bbcwhodoyouthinkyouare.co.uk

Format licensed by Wall to Wall Media Ltd.