Who Do You Think You Are? Season 2

This 2011 second season of NBC's genealogy series offers eight more episodes in which celebrities investigate their roots with a good deal of help from expert researchers. Here, Vanessa Williams discovers that an ancestor was the first African American to serve in his state's legislature, while Ashley Judd traces her family back to the Mayflower, and country singer Tim McGraw finds that a member of his biological father's family was praised by George Washington. Most of the featured subjects, however, turn up unhappiness from the past. Rosie O'Donnell traces her immigrant forebears back to an Irish workhouse, Steve Buscemi learns of a suicidal relation, and Lionel Richie discovers that his great-grandfather was a leader in the effort to secure economic well-being for post–Civil War blacks, but ended up in a pauper's grave. Kim Cattrall hears the painful truth about her maternal grandfather, who abandoned his wife and young daughters but, as it turns out, did not ultimately lack for a loving family. The episode featuring Gwyneth Paltrow is both inspiring and sad, with one side of her ancestry descending from a line of distinguished rabbis and the other from orphans who fled Barbados for the United States. Who Do You Think You Are? continues to tell true stories that are intriguing and often touching, with an innate mystery element that lends a genuine narrative arc to this reality series. Recommended. (F. Swietek)