Who Do You Think You Are? review: These emotional family tales still have the power to move you, Hollywood glitz or not

After all, there's only so many times you can watch a beloved celebrity sitting at the central island of their open-plan kitchen-diner looking at old family photos before discovering their ancestors scrabbled their way out of Dickensian poverty.

Inevitably, repetition means you would imagine the viewer would fall prey to a sort of family tree fatigue.

But this genealogy show constantly finds ways to surprise you – think Rob Rinder's emotional trek through his family's past in the Holocaust, Greg Davies' claims to be Prince of Wales or Danny Dyer in a ruff.

And the opening episode of this new series was no different – albeit with an extra sprinkling of Hollywood glamour.

Andrew Garfield, double Oscar nominee and one of many Spider-Men, was the focus of the episode and from the off it revealed a few secrets, not the least of which was that his dad's from the US and Andrew was born in LA.

From there, we were off, with mystery surrounding his great-grandfather Ludwig and two unidentified women posing with him in a family photo.

“I'm trying to shine a light on the places where it's most dark,” Garfield says. “You know, the places no one wanted to talk about, that's where I want to go.”

And so off to Poland we go, and anyone who has watched Who Do You Think You Are? will know that pretty much always means one thing – the Holocaust.

And yet, while Garfield's family story goes to places we may be distressingly familiar with, from pogroms, poverty and the ghettoes and on to the death camps, this story always carries incredible emotional heft.

Not least because Garfield stands in the streets of Kielce, southern Poland, and can easily imagine the terror of his great-great grandparents, his great aunts and uncles, as the Russians initially, and then the Nazis, initiate the appalling slaughter of Jews.

Three of his great-grandfather Ludwig's sisters effectively disappeared, with almost no record of them after 1935. Fortunately, Ludwig, his wife Sara and young son Sammy – Garfield's grandfather – had already gone, off to London to seek a better life and maybe some money to send home.

And that's where Who Do You Think You Are? really hits home – it emphasises the fragility of life, the luck of birth which brings us where we are.

Ludwig's decision to leave Poland for London – and later Los Angeles – meant that he and his family survived. Meant that Andrew's dad had a secure upbringing, meant that Garfield himself was born and thrived.

Existential musing aside, after the darkness of Poland, we needed some light, and Garfield found it in his second home of Los Angeles.

His great-grandmother's family had also fled eastern Europe for London, before heading to LA and the bright lights of young Hollywood.

A skilled tailor, Henry Kupczyk – later to become Cooper – hobnobbed with studio bosses and then opened his own high-class womenswear store on Hollywood Boulevard, frequented by Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

Meanwhile, a cousin Bernard, went to live with the Coopers and became a respected journalist, returning to Europe at the end of the war as one of the Monuments Men, tracing art looted by the Nazis and returning it to its former owners – often Jewish families.

It's a story that particular to Garfield and his family, but the thing about Who Do You Think You Are? is that it's universal. We all have families, we all have ancestors, all of whom have stories to tell.

And in the small details, in the struggles and the triumphs, we can see ourselves reflected, whether you're a Hollywood star or not.