Reflecting on Life's Journey: The End of ITV's 70 Up

ITV brings down the curtain on a television experiment that began with class and ended by documenting life itself.

“Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man”

Rudyard Kipling

There are 12 surviving members of the original 14, although 11 were filmed for 70 Up. Charles Furneaux also returned to the project, but was recorded rather than filmed. TollBit

Tony Walker: The irrepressible East End boy who wanted to be a jockey. He did ride professionally for a time, then became a London taxi driver. He and his wife Debbie became one of the series’ enduring partnerships, and Tony remains very much Tony at 70.

Jackie Bassett: One of the three East End girls with Lynn and Sue. Jackie married, had children and worked various jobs, and became one of Michael Apted’s most formidable interviewees, repeatedly challenging his assumptions about class and women. She describes the ending as both wonderful and terrible. TollBit

Sue Davis: Sue built a career as a university administrator, raised her children and retained her love of singing and theatre. At 70 she says she’s comfortable with herself and proud of having participated in the series. TollBit

Suzy Lusk: The privately educated girl whose childhood wasn’t particularly happy. She married Rupert Dewey, raised a family and eventually withdrew from 63 Up, but returned for 70 Up. Wikipedia

Andrew Brackfield: One of the three privileged boys first seen at prep school confidently predicting their educational futures. He went into law, becoming a solicitor, married and had a family. He’s one of the fascinating examples of how accurately a seven-year-old’s social environment could map out a future.

John Brisby: Another of those three boys. He became a barrister, and over the years spoke strongly about Bulgaria, his family connections there and charitable work. He has dipped in and out of the series but returned for 70 Up. Wikipedia

Charles Furneaux: The third of the trio. Intriguingly, he went into television himself, becoming a documentary producer. He stopped participating after 21 Up and stayed away for decades, but returned for the final programme by recorded contribution, rather than appearing on camera. Jude Rogers

Peter Davies: One of the Liverpool boys. He became a teacher, later left teaching and became involved in music. He disappeared from the series for several instalments after controversy surrounding comments he made in 28 Up, but eventually returned. Wikipedia

Neil Hughes: Perhaps the most extraordinary journey of the lot. The enchanting little boy who wanted to be an astronaut later struggled badly, dropped out of university and experienced homelessness. He subsequently became a councillor and lay preacher and now has his home in France. TollBit

Bruce Balden: At seven he wanted to be a missionary. He became a teacher, worked in India, taught in both state and private education, married relatively late and raised a family. Now retired, he volunteers with the RNLI. He also famously helped Neil when Neil was homeless. TollBit

Paul Kligerman: Paul was the quiet boy from a children’s home. His family emigrated to Australia, where he built his adult life, married Susan and worked in the building trade. His story has always been one of the gentler threads running through the programme.

Symon Basterfield: The only Black child among the original 14, Symon also spent part of his childhood in care. He later married Viennetta, and particularly movingly, given his own childhood, they became foster carers themselves. Jude Rogers

And then there are the two empty chairs: Lynn Johnson, who died in 2013, and Nick Hitchon, the Yorkshire farmer’s son who became a nuclear physicist in America and died in 2023.

There was something extraordinarily moving about the conclusion of ITV’s 70 Up, shown last night, Tuesday 22 September, bringing to an end a television experiment that began at Granada Television more than six decades ago. After years of questions, marriages, children, careers, disappointments, successes, illnesses and bereavements, the surviving participants were no longer being asked what they might become. They were looking back at what they had been, what life had made of them and what it had meant to spend virtually an entire lifetime growing older in front of a television camera.

The final programme was produced by MultiStory Media, part of ITV Studios, in association with Lafcadia Productions, but its roots stretch directly back to Granada Television and one of the most important current-affairs programmes British television ever produced, World in Action. In 1964 Granada brought together 14 seven-year-old children from markedly different social backgrounds for Seven Up!, originally conceived as a one-off examination of class, privilege and opportunity in Britain. Nobody at Granada could possibly have known what they had started.

The cameras returned when the children were 14, and then again at 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63 and finally 70. What began as a piece of Granada current-affairs television gradually became one of the longest-running and most extraordinary documentary projects ever attempted, following real people through almost the entire span of their adult lives.

Last night’s second and final part brought Sue, Bruce, Jackie, Suzy, Peter, John and Andrew back to reflect upon the hopes and expectations captured by those cameras over the decades. They were no longer simply the subjects of a social experiment. To generations of viewers they had become familiar faces, people whose marriages, careers, children, successes, disappointments and losses we had periodically returned to share.

There was also an unavoidable sense of absence. Michael Apted, who began as a young researcher on the original Granada programme before becoming the director most closely associated with the series, died in 2021. Lynn Johnson, one of the original 14 children, died in 2013, while Nick Hitchon, the Yorkshire farmer’s son who became a nuclear physicist, died in 2023 after recording one final interview. Those losses gave 70 Up a poignancy quite unlike anything the programme could have possessed when those children first stood before Granada’s cameras in black and white.

Yet 70 Up was about considerably more than saying goodbye. It offered one final opportunity to consider how a programme devised to examine the British class system slowly escaped the boundaries of its own experiment and became something its creators could never have anticipated: a portrait of human life unfolding across more than 60 years.

Fourteen Children and One Enormous Question

When Granada Television first brought together 14 seven-year-old children for World in Action in 1964, the intention was political and sociological. Britain was still a deeply class-conscious country and the programme wanted to ask whether the circumstances into which a child was born would determine the adult that child eventually became.

The children came from strikingly different backgrounds. Some were already attending preparatory schools and could confidently discuss the schools and universities they expected to attend, while others came from working-class families or children’s homes and faced very different prospects. Their accents alone seemed to describe the enormous social distances separating them.

The programme was built around the famous proposition, “Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” It was a provocative idea: could Britain look at a seven-year-old child and already see the adult waiting inside? The filmmakers could not possibly have known that answering that question would take another 63 years.

The Children We Came to Know

The great achievement of the Up series was that its participants gradually ceased to feel like subjects in a sociological experiment. To generations of viewers, they became people we knew, or at least felt we knew, because every seven years we were invited back into their lives to discover what had happened since we last saw them.

There was Tony Walker, the irrepressible East End boy who dreamed of becoming a jockey. He did ride professionally, although not to the heights he had once imagined, before becoming a London taxi driver. Across the decades there was something wonderfully consistent about Tony: energetic, opinionated, funny, sometimes contradictory and unmistakably himself.

There was Jackie Bassett, forthright from childhood and increasingly prepared as an adult to challenge Apted when she believed his questions reflected assumptions about women, class or what constituted achievement. Her exchanges with the filmmaker became part of the story because the participants were no longer passive subjects. As they grew older, they increasingly questioned the experiment that had spent so many years questioning them.

Sue Davis became another familiar presence, her life unfolding through work, relationships and family without the dramatic narrative television normally demands. That very ordinariness became important because Up increasingly understood that an apparently ordinary life is not an empty one. Jobs, children, friendships, disappointments and small triumphs are the substance from which most human lives are constructed.

Bruce Balden, the thoughtful child who once expressed the touching ambition of becoming a missionary and helping people, became a teacher. Peter Davies became a teacher too, although his relationship with the programme was complicated and he disappeared from it for many years after controversy followed remarks he made in an earlier instalment.

Andrew Brackfield and John Brisby were among the privately educated boys whose childhood expectations had seemed almost startlingly precise. Their presence was crucial to the original examination of privilege and opportunity, but as the decades passed even these apparently predictable lives became more complicated than the social labels attached to them at seven.

Suzy Lusk initially appeared to represent another privileged childhood, but her relationship with the series demonstrated something important about the entire project: not everybody enjoyed being examined. She became increasingly uncomfortable with the process and eventually chose not to participate further. Her absence became part of the story itself, a reminder that these were real people rather than characters who belonged to television.

Neil: The Life Nobody Could Have Predicted

Perhaps no participant demonstrated the limitations of the original experiment more powerfully than Neil Hughes. At seven, Neil was an enchanting, lively Liverpool schoolboy, full of imagination and possibility, and few viewers watching that little boy could have predicted what followed.

By adulthood his life had become painfully unsettled. He experienced serious mental-health difficulties, struggled to establish a conventional career and at one point lived without a permanent home. His appearances became among the most haunting in the entire series because viewers remembered the joyful child who had come before.

Yet Neil’s story did not stop there. He later became involved in local politics, served as a councillor and continued writing and participating in public life. His journey refused the neat narrative the original programme had sought and became perhaps the strongest evidence that a human life cannot simply be reduced to a prediction made at seven.

Nick and the Final Interview

Then there was Nick Hitchon, the Yorkshire farmer’s son whose intelligence carried him from a rural childhood into an academic career in the United States, where he became a nuclear physicist. His story had always been one of the clearest examples of education and ability changing the apparent trajectory of a child’s life, but in the final chapter his contribution acquired an entirely different significance.

Knowing that he was terminally ill, Nick wanted to take part one last time and his final interview was filmed shortly before his death in 2023. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful demonstration of what the Up project had become. The programme that once asked a small boy what he wanted to be when he grew up was now listening to that same person contemplating the end of his life. The social experiment had become something approaching a collective family album.

Lynn and the Empty Chair

The absence of Lynn Johnson carried its own sadness. Lynn, who had worked for many years as a children’s librarian, died in 2013 and became the first of the original participants to die. For viewers who had watched these people repeatedly return to the screen, death altered the contract of the programme because there had previously been an assumption that another seven years would pass and everybody would somehow assemble again.

Eventually, however, seven years becomes a long time, and by 70 Up every reunion carried an unspoken question about who would still be there. That gave the archive a different emotional weight. The black-and-white children of 1964 remain permanently seven years old on film, running, laughing, arguing and confidently discussing futures they cannot yet understand, while the viewer now knows something those children could never know: where some of those lives eventually led.

Michael Apted: The Man Behind the Questions

The greatest absence in 70 Up was Michael Apted himself. Apted had been a young researcher on the original Seven Up! before becoming the director who returned to the participants at 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56 and 63, becoming inseparable from the project over the decades.

His relationship with the participants was not always comfortable. Some challenged his assumptions and criticised the way their lives were edited or interpreted. Jackie, in particular, confronted him about the questions he asked women and what she regarded as his tendency to judge achievement according to conventional expectations. Those disagreements ultimately strengthened the documentary because they exposed something fascinating: the observer had become part of the experiment too.

Apted was ageing alongside them. The young researcher became a celebrated filmmaker, the participants became adults, and the professional relationship gradually acquired the complicated intimacy of people who had known one another for most of their lives.

After Apted’s death in 2021, it seemed entirely possible that 63 Up would be the final instalment. Oscar-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia eventually took on the formidable task of completing one last chapter, but Apted’s absence hangs over 70 Up. The interviewer who had spent decades asking everybody else to reflect upon their lives was no longer there to ask the final questions.

When Class Became Life

The original programme was interested primarily in class. By 70 Up, class remained important, but it was no longer capable of explaining everything that had happened. Education, money, housing and family background mattered enormously, and the opportunities available to a privately educated child were demonstrably different from those available to a child growing up in poverty, but then life intervened.

People married people nobody could have predicted. Marriages succeeded and failed, careers changed direction and children arrived. Some participants became wealthier while others struggled. They moved abroad, became parents and grandparents, experienced illness, discovered new interests and reconsidered things they had once believed with absolute certainty. The programme discovered something considerably more complicated than its original hypothesis: class can shape the road, but it cannot tell us everything that will happen upon it.

Britain Grew Older With Them

There was another participant in Seven Up! who was never formally interviewed: Britain itself. The country visible in the grainy black-and-white film of 1964 is recognisably Britain, but it is also another world. The clothes, schools, accents, expectations and rigid assumptions about class belonged to a society emerging from the post-war period.

As the participants changed, Britain changed around them. Attitudes towards women, marriage, education, employment and social mobility shifted. Industries disappeared, new professions emerged, divorce became more commonplace and technology transformed everyday life. The certainty with which some seven-year-olds could describe the social position they expected to occupy became increasingly alien.

The Up series therefore became an accidental history of modern Britain, not documenting that history through prime ministers, elections or royal occasions, but through kitchens, marriages, jobs, children, mortgages, holidays and conversations around ordinary tables. In many ways, that may ultimately have been more revealing.

Growing Older With Them

Part of the emotional power of 70 Up came from the relationship between the participants and the audience because, while they grew older, viewers grew older too. Someone who watched the original programme as a young adult in 1964 could be watching 70 Up as a grandparent or great-grandparent, while others joined the series later and caught up through previous instalments, discovering the strange experience of watching a human being move from childhood to middle age within minutes.

We saw Tony the child beside Tony the older man, Neil at seven suddenly appearing beside Neil decades later, and Nick the farmer’s son followed through university, America, marriage, academic life and finally his last illness. Television normally compresses time artificially, but Seven Up! possessed the real thing. Every wrinkle was genuine, every grey hair represented years that had actually passed, and the marriages, children, bereavements and disappointments were not plot developments written for an audience. They were lives.

Could Television Ever Do This Again?

It is difficult to imagine another documentary quite like it. Modern television is impatient and reality television can manufacture an entire life-changing narrative within a few weeks, while Seven Up! simply waited seven years between episodes. Nobody knew what would happen to Neil because nobody could know. Nobody could write Tony’s next chapter or predict Nick’s future. The filmmakers simply had to wait, along with everybody else, and that patience became one of the programme’s greatest assets.

It also raised uncomfortable questions about documentary television. What does it mean to place children before cameras and continue examining them for the rest of their lives? Were participants sometimes unfairly reduced to narratives created in the editing room? Did viewers occasionally feel that they knew people whom, in reality, they had never met? The series increasingly allowed those questions into the programme itself as participants challenged Apted, complained about their portrayal, walked away and sometimes returned. Gradually the subjects of the experiment acquired authority over the experiment itself.

Give Me the Child

The proposition behind Seven Up! suggested certainty: give us the child and perhaps we can show you the adult. After 63 years, the answer offered by the programme was considerably more interesting. Sometimes perhaps we can, but often we cannot.

Fourteen children were placed before television cameras in 1964 because producers wanted to examine Britain’s class system, without knowing they were beginning one of the longest and most remarkable documentary projects television would ever produce. Those children became teenagers, young adults, husbands and wives, parents and grandparents. They succeeded and failed, fell in love, separated, struggled, prospered, became ill and grew old. Some chose to leave the experiment, some returned and some died.

Somewhere along that extraordinary journey, viewers stopped seeing them merely as participants. We knew Tony and worried about Neil. We admired Nick and listened to Jackie challenge the assumptions placed upon her. We watched Sue, Bruce, Andrew, John, Peter, Suzy and the others navigate lives which stubbornly refused to fit perfectly into the boxes created for them when they were seven.

That is why the ending of 70 Up feels different from the cancellation or conclusion of an ordinary television programme. It feels like saying goodbye to people we have known for years. Seven Up! began as a documentary about social class and became a documentary about Britain. Eventually, almost without anyone noticing, it became something larger still: a documentary about time, ageing and the unpredictable business of being alive.

The first programme asked what kind of adults those 14 children would become. Sixty-three years later, we finally had the answer: they became themselves, and television was privileged enough to watch.