Seven Up Series

1 9 6 3 – 2 0 2 6 (UK)
1 x 40 minute episode, 1 x 52 minute episode, 1 x 100 minute episode,
1 x 136 minute episode, 1 x 112 minute episode, 1 x 139 minute episode,
2 x 60 minute episodes, 6 x 50 minute episodes, 2 x 90 minute episodes

“We’ve brought these children together because we wanted a glimpse of England in the year 2000. The shop steward and the executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old”

So began an edition of Granada’s now sadly-defunct documentary series World In Action, filmed in 1963 and titled Seven Up.

Taking as a premise the Jesuit saying “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man”, the programme selected 14 children, all aged seven, from a variety of contrasting class, gender and ethnic backgrounds, and then asked them a series of questions about who they were, what they liked, what they thought of the world around them and most significantly, what they thought would happen to them in the future.

The children’s responses were intended to test the validity of the Jesuit proverb and give the viewer unique insight into how the key questions of nurture and upbringing shaped a child’s destiny.

Of the 14 children, roughly six were working class or poor, four were upper class, and four were notionally “middle class”. Only four were female; only one was black.

Seven Up adopted a straightforward question-and-answer format, quizzing each child in their own learning environment, then bringing them together to watch the bemused collision of class and etiquette at a visit to London Zoo, a party, and an adventure playground.

In doing so, the World In Action production team created a piece of television that, unknowingly, laid the groundwork for the most ambitious, significant, and influential television documentary project ever.

Unbelievably, in retrospect, the original film was perceived as a one-off with no thought given to checking to see if any of the 14 kids actually did realise their dreams by the year 2000. But at the end of the 1960s, Michael Apted proposed another one-off film to Granada, returning to see how each of the children was progressing.

Seven Plus Seven was shown in 1970, with Apted himself in charge as interviewer and director. Since then, this cyclical concept (returning after each seven-year period) has produced a collection of documentaries unique in TV history. 21 Up appeared in 1977; 28 Up in 1984. 35 Up followed in May 1991, and 42 Up was shown in July 1998.

49 Up aired in 2005, 56 Up in May 2012, and the ninth documentary, 63 Up, premiered in the UK on ITV in 2019.

Apted was an exemplary filmmaker. His direction (editing new footage with selections from an ever-expanding archive) is evocative, engaging, and often very moving, with touches like beginning each film with the original black-and-white World In Action title sequence.

What of the people themselves?

Tony from London’s East End (pictured at left) wanted to be a jockey at age seven, worked at stables at 14, and rode at Kempton before he was 21 (“all my ambition fulfilled in one moment”).

At 14, he declared that if he couldn’t make it with the horses, he’d become a cabby.

He still drove a taxi at 42. Such foresight and confidence seemed built on brazen self-assurance: “All I understand is dogs, prices, girls, the ‘Knowledge’, roads, streets, squares and Mum and Dad and love. That’s all I understand – all I want to understand,” he announced at 21.

But come 42, and the death of his parents, the near collapse of his marriage, and the symbolic move out of London to leafy Essex suburbia, he seemed more guarded and cautious.

“I’ve done as well as I can do – I think this is about the limitations for me now.”

Jackie, Lynn, and Sue are one of two trios from similar backgrounds; in this case, another East End school.

While Lynn married young at 19 (“You do think, Christ, what have I done?” she confessed at 21), she was still with her first husband – while Sue (married at 24) and Jackie (at 19) had both been through various relationships. All had children they struggled to raise, with or without help from older relatives.

The three girls seemed to have the strongest relationships with their children, openly loving and caring for them on screen, with Sue saying she wanted her kids to have “really satisfying” careers, something she never had.

The two other lower-class kids – Symon and Paul –  were in a London care home at seven as the only children of single parents.

Both seemed aware of their status as something socially ‘different’ right from the start. After working in a Walls’ freezer room and as a forklift truck driver, Symon was candid at 42 about “being in the wrong job for so long now”.

We saw him bringing up a large family and marrying twice, and then re-educating himself (having just passed GCSE Maths), apparently more at ease with his life than before.

He is the only black subject of the series, and Apted tried repeatedly to question him on notions of discrimination and what kind of prejudice he had suffered. Symon was subdued and almost indifferent in his answers.

The other child from the care home, Paul, was still trying to master his lack of confidence. He moved to Australia with his father before he turned 14 and spoke of moving gently into middle age and the pleasure of growing old with his family. Like Tony, he had moved “upmarket” into more affluent suburbia.

The second trio of school friends, John, Andrew and Charles, all appeared painfully posh and snobbish at seven; “I read The Observer and The Times“, intoned John, before outlining his exact path faultlessly through elite private education through to his early 20s.

This trio of haughty preppies didn’t help themselves by remaining stubbornly intolerant of Apted throughout. Indeed, John refused to appear in Forty-Two Up and only consented to be filmed for Thirty-Five Up to promote a Kurdish benefit recital.

Worse, Charles refused to appear in any of the films after Twenty-One Up, with Apted informing us in a voice-over of his whereabouts by 1998 – Head of science documentaries at Channel Four!

Andrew stuck with the project and, at 42, held a high-ranking law job and took his kids to New York for a half-term holiday.

“Just because you had the opportunities, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to pull through,” he argued with reference to his privileged background.

But the evidence was revealed time and again in the difference in standards of living (Andrew seemed to live in near-estate-sized rural dwellings, while Jackie lived in a council flat near Glasgow, getting her mother-in-law to pay her bills).

The other upper-class subject – Suzy – appeared nervous and depressed at 21, but was a happy mother by 42 with three kids and a comfortable home. She didn’t “like babies” at 21, but at 42 stated “, All I want is to be alive long enough to see my children grow up.”

It’s telling that, while in most cases the kids appeared endearing and affectionate at seven, thanks to their charming, innocent observations (“What does university mean?” pleaded Paul), the four upper-class kids were obvious exceptions, whose pronouncements and extremely plummy voices made you want to abhor them.

Nick grew up as a farmer’s son in the Yorkshire Dales but went to boarding school, read Physics at Oxford University and became a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin in America.

He did not “fit in” with what his rural background might have ordained for his future; though he noted that his childhood fascination with how things worked – and his desire to “find out about the moon” at seven – prefigured his later career in science.

In 42 Up he was filmed revisiting the Yorkshire village in which he was born and brought up, finding his father coping with the collapse of the farming industry by selling up and retiring early.

Nick was one of the most lucid and engaging characters in the series; at seven he announced “If I could change the world I’d change it into a diamond”; at 42 he concluded he had to move away from the Dales, for while being “enormously proud of coming from here”, “here” was not where he could realise his dreams and ambitions.

Bruce was at pre-prep school at seven; Oxford at 21; but gave up a career in insurance to teach in London’s East End. At 14, he explained how he didn’t “agree with the Conservatives’ racial policy”; and at 42, he was head of Maths at a multiracial, multicultural secondary school.

He only got married in 1997 and spoke of entering middle age quite contentedly, remaining an unashamed optimist and confident about the future.

Throughout the series, the one figure who consistently drew the most emotional investment and concern from viewers was Neil Hughes. His case was left to the end of 42 Up to provide suitable dramatic weight and climax to the film.

Neil moved from middle-class Liverpool suburbia at seven and 14, to a London squat at 21; he was homeless in the wilds of West Scotland at 28, and then living in a council house on the Shetlands at 35.

Physically downtrodden and destitute by this point, it became unclear whether he would actually survive from one film to the next.

His condition was so dire that Bruce himself got in touch after 28 Up, offered Neil a place to stay in London for a while, and they became close friends. By 42 Up, Neil was, incredibly, a Liberal Democrat councillor for Hackney; had an Open University degree and taught English as a foreign language; and, for the first time in his life, was “looking to the future.”

The 14th child refused to appear in 42 Up – but curiously, unlike the other two, his whereabouts weren’t even mentioned; in fact, no reference was made to him at all. In 35 Up, he was a frustrated teacher in Leicester, but beyond that, all was a mystery.

Each film tends to have a common “theme” – 21 Up concentrates on beginning life beyond education; 28 Up on coping with marriage; 35 Up the arrival of children; and most presciently in 42 Up, dealing with mortality (for by this point, most of the subject’s parents were dead, and their talk was increasingly of reflecting on their own upbringing with a view to bringing their own kids up as best they could).

Lynn Johnson passed away after a brief illness in 2013, a year after the release of 56 Up. Nick Hitchon died on 23 July 2023 at the age of 65.

Michael Apted produced three spin-offs: Age Seven In The USA and Age Seven In Russia (which both started in 1991), plus Age Seven In South Africa, which began in 1994.

Apted is reported to have said, “I hope to do 84 Up when I’ll be 99”. Sadly, he died in 2021.

Following Apted’s death, the Up films finally closed with the Asif Kapadia-directed 70 Up: The Final Chapter (2026).

Neil Hughes
Tony Walker
Jackie Bassett
Lynn Johnson
Sue Davis
Symon Basterfield
Paul Kligerman
John Brisby
Andrew Brackfield
Charles Furneaux
Suzy Lusk
Nick Hitchon
Bruce Balden
Peter Davies
Michael Apted

Episodes

Seven Up! (1964) | 7 Plus Seven (1970) | 21 Up (1977) | 28 Up (1984) | 35 Up (1991) | 42 Up (1998) | 49 Up (2005) | 56 Up (2012) | 63 Up (2019) | 70 Up (2026)