ITV will broadcast 70 Up, the tenth and final series in the landmark Up documentary project, in two parts from Tuesday, September 15, at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX. The series has followed the same 14 Britons since they were filmed as seven-year-olds in 1964.
The project has returned to its original cast every seven years, building what has been described as one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Two of the original 14 participants have since died, as has the series' longtime director, Michael Apted, who died in 2021. Journalist Robert Hardman, who watched all nine previous series, running to 17 hours of television, ahead of the finale, said clips of the two-part farewell remain under wraps.
How the series began
The Up project started as 7 Up in 1964, made by ITV's World in Action documentary unit. Its producer, the Australian-born Tim Hewat, wanted to challenge claims that post-war Britain was becoming a classless society, and drew on the old Jesuit saying, "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." Apted, who joined the team on the original series, went on to direct the project from 1970 through to 63 Up in 2019.
The cast included Andrew, who at seven forecast a path through public school, Oxbridge and a City law firm and went on to follow exactly that route, and three East End friends, Jackie Bassett, Lynn Johnson and Sue Lusk, who as children dreamed of houses and families.
Also among the 14 was Symon Basterfield, a mixed-race boy raised in a care home who said as a child that he just wanted "to be liked" and who now has 12 grandchildren and has fostered 120 more children. Others included Suzy, a ballet dancer who became a chain-smoking teenager and later a mother, and Peter, a Yorkshire farmer's boy who went on to become a nuclear physicist.
Lives that changed direction
Neil Hughes, a chess-playing boy from a middle-class home in Liverpool who once dreamed of space travel, was bullied at school, dropped out of Aberdeen University and became homeless. He rebuilt his life through casual work and became a lay clergyman and Liberal Democrat councillor. In 63 Up, he said his councillor's allowance and modest lifestyle allowed him to stop claiming benefits, calling it "a great relief."
Jackie Bassett, one of the three East End friends, married at 19 and was divorced twice, raising her three children as a single parent. She was later diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which stopped her working, and objected when the production focused on her illness. "The last one was very much based on the sympathy and the illness that I've got and what I may or may not be able to do," she said. "It should have been about what I can do, what I am doing, what I will do." She added, "We cut our costs accordingly." In 49 Up, she told Apted, "I'm more intelligent than you thought I would be."
Careers, class and unexpected turns
John Brisby, educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, became a barrister and later a King's Counsel, and is shown working as a philanthropist with charities in Bulgaria, his mother's native country. Charles Furneaux, educated at Marlborough and Durham, was so unhappy with his portrayal that he had a falling out with Apted after 21 Up and did not speak to him again; he went on to become a documentary maker himself and reappears in 70 Up.
Tony, one of the East End boys, dreamed of being a jockey and once raced against Lester Piggott before, in his words, it "all turned sour." By 28 Up he was driving a London taxi and later secured a small acting role as a cabbie in EastEnders. Paul, a care home child who emigrated to Australia, is shown happy there, having asked as a boy, "What does university mean?" Peter Davies, a musician and teacher turned lawyer, is shown at 70 still writing music and books, and Sue Davis says she finds retirement from university administration "hard" and is seeking "a new direction."
A school in a changed East End
Bruce Bolden, the son of an Army officer who once dreamed of being a missionary, studied at St Paul's School and Oxford before teaching maths at an East End comprehensive, the same school Jackie, Sue and Lynn had attended as children in 1964. The series notes that the East End was entirely white when the girls first appeared, but that by the time Bolden was teaching there in 1984 most of his pupils were Asian; the borough is now 24 per cent white. Bolden later taught at a private school in St Albans and, now 70, has retired to the seaside, where he sings in a choir and volunteers for the RNLI. A Facebook user named Abdul Aziz commented under ITV's announcement of the new series that Bolden was his "inspirational" teacher and one of the reasons he became a teacher himself.
A less diverse cast by today's standards
Of the 14 original participants, ten are male and four are female, and Symon is the only non-white cast member. All 14 grew up speaking English and none was foreign-born, though Paul later emigrated to Australia.
Comparisons with welfare and unemployment
The Up series has been compared with Benefits Street, a Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall series made 50 years after 7 Up, which followed residents of the Winson Green area of Birmingham. According to figures cited from the Conservatives, the number of working-age households receiving more in benefits than someone on the national average income of £32,000 rose by 30 per cent over the past year, to more than 600,000. The Office for National Statistics reported last month that the number of young people not in education, employment or training, known as Neets, is now just shy of one million. Britain's overall welfare bill stands at £350 billion a year, more than half of it spent on working-age claimants.
Hardman argued that not one of the original 14 would have contemplated becoming a Neet or appearing on Benefits Street, writing that "a hand up is worth so much more than a handout."
