About the series · The Up Series
Granada's current-affairs strand World in Action (editor Tim Hewat, an Australian appalled by the rigidity of the English class system) set out in 1964 to test one thesis: does social class predetermine how children turn out? Fourteen seven-year-olds from the upper, middle and working classes (Kensington prep school, a Liverpool suburb, the East End, a Yorkshire Dales farm, a children's home) were interviewed for a 40-minute film framed by the Jesuit maxim 'Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.' Michael Apted, a researcher on that film, returned to the same children every seven years until 63 Up (2019); after his death the series was closed by Asif Kapadia with 70 Up (Sept 2026). The class thesis was largely borne out for the boys chosen from the top and bottom; the series' lasting subject became something broader — time, luck, marriage, mental health and the ethics of filming a life.
The ten films
- Seven Up! · 1964-05-05 · Paul Almond · 40 min
- 7 Plus Seven · 1970-12-15 · Michael Apted · 53 min
- 21 Up · 1977-05-09 · Michael Apted · 100 min
- 28 Up · 1984-11-20 · Michael Apted · 136 min
- 35 Up · 1991-05-22 · Michael Apted · 116 min
- 42 Up · 1998-07-21 · Michael Apted · 133 min
- 49 Up · 2005-09-15 · Michael Apted · 134 min
- 56 Up · 2012-05-14 · Michael Apted · 144 min
- 63 Up · 2019-06-04 · Michael Apted · 150 min
- 70 Up · 2026-09-15 and 2026-09-22 (Tuesdays 9pm, ITV1 + ITVX) · Asif Kapadia · 180 min
British terms in the films
- Prep school · public school
- A prep school is a fee-paying private primary, usually from seven or eight to thirteen, that prepares pupils for the public schools. A "public school" in Britain is one of the old, famous fee-paying secondary schools — Charterhouse, Marlborough and Westminster in the films — the opposite of what the word suggests.
- Grammar school · comprehensive
- After the 1944 Education Act, state secondary schooling in England was split by an exam at eleven, the 11-plus: those who passed went to a grammar school (academic, leading to university), the rest to a secondary modern. From the mid-1960s most areas replaced the split with comprehensive schools. Of the three East End girls only Lynn passed into a grammar school; Jackie and Sue went to a comprehensive; Nick boarded at a grammar school in Skipton.
- Boarding school
- Pupils live at school during term. Most public schools board. Bruce was already at a boarding school at seven, missing his distant father; Nick boarded at his grammar school at fourteen.
- Oxbridge
- Oxford and Cambridge together, Britain's two oldest universities and the yardstick the series used for whether class fixes a future. Andrew went to Cambridge, John and Nick to Oxford; Charles and Neil both failed to get in.
- Solicitor · barrister · KC
- English lawyers come in two kinds: solicitors deal directly with clients, documents and transactions; barristers are instructed by solicitors to argue in court. "Queen's Counsel" (King's Counsel since Charles III's accession in 2022) is the rank given to senior barristers. Andrew is a solicitor; John a barrister, QC from 1996.
- Council housing
- Housing built and owned by a local council and let at low rents. From 1980 the Thatcher government's Right to Buy let tenants buy their own council home at a discount — which is how Sue came to own the flat the council found her after her divorce. Neil's flat in Shetland and Bruce's near his East End school were council housing too.
- Benefits
- The umbrella term for state welfare payments. Neil lived on benefits while homeless; Jackie drew disability benefit for years for rheumatoid arthritis, and in the coalition government's austerity years of the 2010s was among the many reassessed as "fit for work".
- Children's home
- A residential home run by a charity or a council for children whose parents cannot look after them. Paul and Simon were in the same dormitory at Shaftesbury Homes in Twickenham at seven.
- The East End
- The old working-class districts of east London, north of the Thames — Bethnal Green, Whitechapel — once the docks and factories. Tony, Jackie, Lynn and Sue all started here; Bruce later chose to teach at a state school near Whitechapel.
- The Knowledge
- The licence exam for London's black-cab drivers, which means memorising thousands of streets and routes and usually takes years. Tony sat it after giving up riding at twenty-one, then drove a cab for forty years, until Uber.
- Tabloid
- Small-format mass-market newspapers known for sensational headlines. In 1984 the right-wing tabloids branded Peter an "angry young red"; he received hate mail and left the series for twenty-eight years.
- Councillor
- An elected member of a local council (borough or county), usually part-time. Neil was elected a Liberal Democrat councillor in Hackney in 1996 and later served twenty-one years in Cumbria.
- Labour · Conservative · Liberal Democrat
- Britain's three main parties: Labour on the left, with trade-union roots; the Conservatives on the right; the Liberal Democrats in the centre. Neil sat as a Liberal Democrat; at fifty-six Lynn said she no longer recognised a Labour party she could call left-wing.
- Thatcher
- Margaret Thatcher, Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990, who cut public spending and introduced Right to Buy. It was her government Peter attacked in 28 Up; the tabloid storm that followed drove him out of the series.
- The Jesuit maxim
- "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" — the epigraph of the first film, usually credited to the Jesuits (to Ignatius of Loyola or to Francis Xavier, depending on who is quoting), with no settled source. It is the thesis the whole series set out to test.