Episode 1

Over 26 million of us have taken a DNA test in the past decade. This growing popularity of genetic testing has created worldwide databases that allow us to ask questions previously impossible to answer - about our families, ancestry and health.

Stacey Dooley is meeting people across the UK who want to unlock mysteries hidden within their genetic code. Working with one of the UK’s leading geneticists, Professor Turi King, as well as genealogists, social workers and doctors, she uses the very latest DNA technology to reveal lost heritage, track down missing relatives and detect debilitating diseases before it is too late.

In this episode, Stacey meets 75-year-old Bill who, like a million of us in the UK, has grown up without any contact with his father. Bill was born at the end of World War II after his mum fell in love with his dad - an African American GI stationed at her local Leicestershire airbase. He returned to the US at the end of the war and she never heard from him again. The only information Bill has ever had about his father is the name written on his birth certificate. Now Bill wants to know if analysing his DNA might be able to tell him what happened to his dad - and if he has any living relatives in the States.

53-year-old Richard was very close to his father. So it came as a complete shock when he found out after his dad’s death that they were not blood related… and another man claims he might be his father. He now hopes testing his DNA will be able to solve the mystery of his parentage and reveal if he also has a half-brother.

After a whirlwind romance, Charlie and Rob could not believe their luck when they their son, Cian, was born just over a year later. But their world came crashing down when Charlie’s father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease - a debilitating terminal illness without any cure. Charlie’s father’s diagnosis means that Charlie now has a 50 per cent chance she also carries the gene and could have unknowingly passed it down to son Cian. Only a DNA test will reveal if she – and possibly Cian - will develop the disease.