'70 Up' Marks the End of a 63-Year Documentary Experiment

The long-running British documentary series that began in 1964 has concluded with a new episode titled 70 Up, according to a review published by The Guardian.

The project, launched by Granada Television, first introduced viewers to 14 primary school children from a range of backgrounds in the 1964 film Seven Up!, part of ITV's World in Action series. That original episode was directed by Paul Almond, the review noted, but the series subsequently became closely associated with Michael Apted, who had helped select the children and went on to direct the following instalments.

According to the review, Apted died in 2021, two years after completing 63 Up, which was widely believed at the time to be the series' conclusion.

However, the review states that plans for a final episode changed after one of the original participants, Nick Hitchon — described as a Yorkshire farmer's son who became a nuclear scientist — contacted the production team to say he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wished to give one last interview. This led to the commissioning of the final episode, the review said.

Filmmaker Asif Kapadia directed 70 Up, according to the review, which characterized the resulting episode as the most elegiac and thoughtful instalment in the series' history.

The Up series has followed its original participants — ten boys and four girls — at seven-year intervals since 1964, examining the Jesuit-attributed maxim, cited in the review, that early childhood shapes adult life: "Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man."

The review was published on The Guardian's culture section ahead of the broadcast of 70 Up on ITV1 and ITVX.