To celebrate 63 Up, the latest instalment in TV's longest running documentary series, this 60-minute special sees the show's famous fans explain why it means so much to them and how it has reflected the major milestones of their own lives.
Granada's World In Action programme took a group of 7 year-old boys and girls, talked to them about their attitudes to life and produced an award-winning programme, Seven Up. Director Michael Apted plans to re-interview them at 7 year interviews to determine how their lives and attitudes have changed. The boys and girls are from many backgrounds - from a children's home, from the working-class East End of London, from a Yorkshire farm, from the stockbroker area of the suburbs. Once again they talk of their views on love, on racialism, on money, on marriage, on school and home. The way these attitudes have changed - or remained the same - is contrasted with clips from the earlier film. It is probably the first programme in which children have been observed over such a long period.
The team who worked on WIA SEVEN UP and SEVEN PLUS SEVEN return to the original fourteen children and talk to them again. The 'children' are now aged 21 and although some of them have realised their seven year old ambitions others are leading quite different lives from those suggested by their childhood interviews.
35 UP discovers what has happened to children featured in WORLD IN ACTION'S SEVEN UP programme now they are 35. The programme looks at the effects on the "children" of being featured in a film project such as this. How, if at all, have their lives been affected? How do they feel about so much media exposure?
Three-part documentary continuing the acclaimed Seven Up! series. It is nearly 50 years since the programme first began, and now the remaining participants are 56 years old.
Second of a three-part documentary continuing the acclaimed Seven Up! series. It is nearly 50 years since the programme first began following a group of seven-year-old children.
Final part of the documentary continuing the acclaimed Seven Up! series. It is nearly 50 years since the programme first began following a group of seven-year-old children.
"Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." Inspired by this Jesuit motto, ITV’s landmark documentary Up series began in 1964, following a group of people drawn from startlingly different backgrounds who have allowed television cameras to drop into their lives at seven year intervals ever since.
Over the course of three episodes, we catch up with Tony, who was in Spain last time we saw him. How has the economic crash affected him? Plus, we also see how previous favourites Nick, Jackie, Bruce, Lynn, Paul, Simon and Neil are getting on. Catching up with people whose lives have been chronicled since the age of seven, including Lynn, who had previously battled a life-threatening brain condition. The programme also revisits Bruce, who reflects on his life and work as a teacher, and Jackie, who was last seen fighting cuts to her disability benefits as well as overcoming a series of family tragedies.
Director Michael Apted catches up with more of the people he first met as seven-year-old children back in 1964. Paul and Symon - who back then were filmed growing up in the same children's home - have an emotional reunion in Australia, where Paul emigrated as a teenager. The film also catches up with Neil, whose rollercoaster life has taken him from homelessness to politics. Last in the series.