The latest series of Who Do You Think You Are? has served as a useful reminder that I’ve been neglecting the old family history of late, so in the last few weeks I’ve rejoined Ancestry, hunted through census records, and buried a host of ancestors whose deaths have now been added to the FreeBMD index. I noticed today is the 200th anniversary of the marriage of Richard Diggens and Mary Matthews, my great-great-great-grandparents, so thought I’d write a little bit about them and their family.

Richard was born in Berkshire (most likely Brimpton or Sulhampstead Abbots) around 1780; Mary was born in Brimpton c.1785. They married (obviously) on 13 October 1806. In common with many of my ancestors, Richard was an agricultural labourer. He died of influenza in 1848, leaving Mary a pauper until her death ten years later. They had nine children, two of whom died as infants.

Their son Richard was, in 1831, a carter’s boy earning three guineas a year, his “contract renewed each year at the Michaelmas Fair”; he was subsequently a farm labourer. He married and had six children. His family fell on hard times when he beame ill and more than once he was subject of a parish removal order. He died c.1865, many of his descendents settling in nearby in Reading.

Richard and Mary’s youngest son, Henry, was also an ag lab in Brimpton, before marrying Mary Hampshire in London in 1856 and moving to Sydenham, now part of the London Borough of Lewisham. By 1891, he worked at the gas company there; he died in 1899. Henry and Mary had at least five children and many of their descendents remained in South London and neighbouring Kent.

Henry’s older brother William, born c.1823, moved from Brimpton the short distance to Woolhampton, where he worked as a gardener’s labourer. He and his wife, Harriet Malt, had eleven children. Their one son, also William (good name), was variously a servant, a plasterer’s labourer, and a warehouse foreman for the “India Gov Stores” – perhaps related to the East India Company? He lived in London and Brighton before, following the death of his first wife with whom he had five children, returning to London where he remarried and had three more.

William the Younger’s many sisters had families of their own: Mary married into the Steanes; Alice into the Chivralls; Clara into the Smiths (aka the Kings); and Edith in to the Goddards. Kate Diggens, my great-grandmother, moved from Brimpton to London where she married my great-grandfather, Albert Pinnock, a hotel worker.

Should you come across this post while Googling your own ancestors and recognise these names, please drop me a line at gen@willhowells.org.uk

I was planning to watch the second episode of the annoyingly-titled The Amazing Mrs Pritchard this evening to see what all the fuss was about, but now I see that More 4 is starting to show flaccid American drama Commander in Chief tonight at exactly the same time. Having caught an episode before (in the way one catches a cold, which coincidentally I had at the time) I’m not expecting great things, but I’m tempted to take a look at the first episode to see if it started any better. (Oh – they appear to be making a TV movie.)

In a similar vein to Mrs Pritchard, opening this Friday in the US and appealing to those who think that Jon Stewart should become President with Stephen Colbert as his running mate (look at the comment on Daily Show clips on YouTube – these people do exist) is Man of the Year , a film about a non-politician who runs for President. Except rather than being a female supermarket manager he’s a male Daily Show style comedian. No idea when the film will open in the UK – not for a while at least, so you’ll have to settle for Jane Horrocks and Geena Davis for the moment.

James Graham’s review of last night’s More 4 film Death of a President is spot on. His summary – “utterly pointless” – is the same conclusion I reached. Here’s a review I posted up last night for Daily Kos readers.

UK digital television channel More 4 this evening transmitted the first broadcast of Death of a President, the controversial new film showing a dramatised assassination of President George W. Bush. The movie has already been rejected by two cinema chains in the US, where it opens on October 27.

In October 2007, President Bush attends a speaking engagement in Chicago. As he departs, a sniper shoots him several times and he dies in hospital shortly afterwards. Those all-too-terrifying words “President Cheney” take effect.

Some deft video and picture editing mattes together genuine footage of Bush with protagonists who also appear as talking heads, reflecting on the events. But is the film disrepectful, and, more importantly, is it any good?

For such a dramatic fictional event, it’s a remarkably dull film. Presumably to give it as much gravitas as possible and to duck accusations of sensationalism, all excitement and tension has been wrung out of it. Whereas a documentary about what might happen if Bush were killed – however foreseeable to most of us – could be interesting, most of the film is a tedious whodunit, focusing on the attempt to identify the shooter. The storytelling device – characters talking to camera, recalling the events and the investigation – is painfully slow and struggles to retain the viewer’s interest.

The fallout from the assassination doesn’t require much imagination, and for the most part the film goes along with the expected consequences: predictably, the writer chooses to introduce a Muslim suspect and Middle East intrigue; tougher snooping laws are quickly enacted. However, a scene of anti-war campaigners cheering when they hear the President of the United States has been killed stuck out like a sore thumb. Shock would be the most likely reaction, surely, even for the most militant protesters, not celebration.

There were so many different ways to deal with the subject matter that it didn’t need to dramatise the murder of a real, living president. It felt gratuitous, whether it was or not, and left a bad taste in the mouth for the rest of the movie. Bush’s fictional speechwriter recounting her prayers with Laura Bush at the hospital seemed particularly tasteless, as was the reuse of Cheney’s Reagan eulogy for Bush.

Did I learn anything from the film? No – because it was entirely fictional. Did I enjoy it? Not really – it was flat, paceless, and obvious. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of showing the killing on grounds of taste and respect, that the result is such a tedious missed opportunity is what makes it hard to justify.

Hurrah for Mr Nimbos, who has made his own BBCone ident.