42 Up · The Up Series
1998-07-21 · Michael Apted · 133 min
Tony Walker
Tony owned up to infidelity and to the marriage surviving it. Materially he had climbed: an Essex house, a second string as a TV extra, and a self-image of a contented man who knew what he had.
Neil Hughes
The rebirth nobody predicted: the homeless man of 28 Up was an elected councillor in Hackney, sheltered by Bruce. 42 Up is where Neil's story turned from tragedy to something stranger and more hopeful.
Bruce Balden
42 Up gave Bruce the ending the audience had wanted for him: a late marriage, filmed by Apted, with Neil in the congregation. The move to St Albans marked a retreat from the front line he had chosen at 28.
Suzy Lusk (Suzanne Dewey)
Suzy at 42 was content and reflective, and openly wished she could rewrite the adolescence the cameras had caught. Her adult life was comfortable but a step down from the estate she was born to.
Nick Hitchon
Professionally at the top of his field, but the film returned him to Yorkshire and to a marriage under strain. The fusion dream was quietly giving way to more applied plasma work.
Andrew Brackfield
At the peak of a demanding legal career, materially secure and family-centred, but already aware the job was eating into time with his sons.
Jackie Bassett
A single mother of three boys on a Lanarkshire estate, far from the East End. She is self-critical about wasted potential and says her own father might have pushed her harder — a mistake she means not to repeat with her sons.
Lynn Johnson
Lynn at 42 is what continuity looks like in the series: same husband, same vocation, same East End, carrying a serious illness without drama. Her conviction and faith are what critics single out.
Sue Davis (later Sue Sullivan; Sue Fitzgerald from 2020)
42 Up catches Sue at the turn: money and single parenthood are hard, but Glenn has appeared and she is singing in public. From here her line rises steadily.
Paul Kligerman
Paul at 42 was a working man in Melbourne whose marriage had lasted twenty years and whose life had changed little on the surface; published accounts of this instalment are thin. Sometime in this period he gave up bricklaying for a job with a sign-making company. His wife later credited the series itself with helping keep their marriage together.
Symon Basterfield
Symon came back at 42 with a second marriage, a young son, a stepdaughter, a dead mother he wished he had spoken to, and five children who no longer trusted him. Vienetta, forthright where he was passive, had pushed him to train as a foster parent and to want more. He blamed his own laziness rather than the system for his lack of education, and stated the creed he would repeat for the rest of the series: you work to live.