In 1964, Canadian director Paul Almond filmed a group of 14 British schoolchildren aged seven years-old for a documentary called “Seven Up!” examining the lives of kids across class divides. Seven years later, the children were filmed again, this time by British director Michael Apted, for “14 Up.” Apted went on to revisit them every seven years, charting their progress, resulting in a further seven films, each equally spaced seven years apart. The result has become one of the most remarkable and original longitudinal documentary series in the world.
Apted, who died in 2019, did not live to see the final two-part instalment, “70 Up,” the first of which airs Tuesday evening in the U.K. on ITV (a U.S. broadcast hasn’t yet been finalized). The baton was handed to “Amy” director Asif Kapadia, who documents 12 of the surviving septuagenarians as they reflect on their lives (two of the original cohort, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, died during the course of the series). Kapadia worked hand in hand with ITV’s factual controller, Jo Clinton-Davis on the show, which has a personal as well as professional meaning for her: not only has she worked on three of the 10 films, but watching the series as a child “was what made me want to go and work in telly,” she tells Variety.
Ahead of the broadcast, Variety sat down with Clinton-Davis, who has worked on “56 Up,” “63 Up” and “70 Up,” to talk about how the series has survived more than six decades, whether it could ever be replicated and why she is as “categorical as anybody can be in television” that this two-part film will be the last in the series. I’ve always felt both incredibly privileged, in how delicate it is but [also] robust because it’s been going for that long. I watched them from seven, and that was what made me want to go and work in telly.
So on a very personal level, it feels the best and most distinctive [series]. And then, on an editorial creative level, you’re working with auteur directors…It’s not like making a program like “Long Lost Family” where they’re brilliant, but [you’re] very, very involved. But on this, I was sort of pretty involved because I felt that there were lots of creative conversations to be had.
It’s delicate because it’s precious. Precious things are delicate, and you don’t want them to break. And that’s what Asif has done.
He’s continued this precious legacy and put his own stamp on it in one sense, and then in the other sense, it’s delicate because for this as for all our projects, you have to tread delicately with people when you’ve got their lives that they’re sharing with you, and you must have a delicacy of touch and an empathy and a duty towards them. So for me, it is delicate in that sense. It’s robust because it comes back, and no other documentary series is that robust to have come back — for [63 years].
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