I've seen the original version - the British one - and it was quite neat; the ones I saw were about a Jordanian-descended TV presenter, who went back to Jordan to talk to her relatives there, and another woman whose family were Polish Jews, and either barely escaped or mostly didn't survive the Warsaw Ghetto (I don't remember which).

Of course, the interest really lies in watching people realise their ancestors were people like them, who had lives and loves and difficulties, even though they lived in different times and sometimes countries. I think people often forget that history, especially history before the early twentieth century, isn't just something that happened to dead people; it's something that they're connected to; this show is good for bringing that to mind.