63 Up: Rich reality of the only TV documentary that’ll soon be in line for a free bus pass

Tonight, ITV, 9pm
Alastair McKay4 June 2019

Depending on how you do the maths, two or three generations have grown up since Michael Apted started his extraordinary documentary series in 1964.

The idea was simple. Seven Up! blended philosophy with the nascent nosiness of television, a medium which was still working out its manners. Apted’s idea was an extension of the Jesuit motto that by looking at a seven- year-old child it would be possible to predict the way their life would turn out. T

he Jesuit scholars were encouraging their followers to be a bit more hands-on in those first seven years, but no matter. The principle was established.

Where are we now? Well, watching the lives of the remaining participants is a funny business. They have a strange kind of fame, which must intrude into their everyday lives to some extent.

Long road: Tony in his cab
Shiver Productions

As television, 63 Up is like a transmission from a more delicate age. In recent days the news headlines have been full of reassuring (not reassuring) statements about the emotional support given to contestants on reality TV, and the use of lie detectors on Love Island. In 63 Up the intrusion is done with good manners and a degree of discretion.

Apted is the polite voice prompting from behind the camera. He doesn’t sound guilty but there is a hint of anthropological concern in his voice. It’s all delightfully analogue.

As science, the series is flawed. There was a randomness to the original sample which makes it hard to draw general conclusions from the experiences of the participants. Its concern was class, and the way that shapes the outcomes of people’s lives.

Back in the day: Tony, aged seven in 1964
ITV

But — like today’s reality TV — the experience of being on television interferes with the lives it is attempting to chronicle. True, the fame comes and goes like a bruise, but at the very least it provides a framework within which the Seven Uppers can narrate their lives. They may even learn to edit their experiences to fit the preoccupations of the programme.

In this way, the programme becomes as much an examination of the prejudices and predispositions of Michael Apted as it is a reliable document of the lives in question, and the ways they have been lived. Still, it’s a wonderful thing, this episodic reality, and it gets richer with time.

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Take Tony, the London cabbie. When he was seven he wanted to be a jockey. He could have been a contender — he raced against Lester Piggott at Newbury.

It wasn’t to be. At 21 he did The Knowledge. At 28, he had his own cab. At 42 he left the East End, moved to Essex, and then had grand plans to build a business in Spain. He was going to run a sports bar but there was no money out there, then Aldi built a supermarket and “all my dreams were evaporating”.

Tony seems like a typical black-cab man. He even played a cabbie in The Bill. He’s not keen on Uber, no longer so sure about Brexit, and he likes seeing the foxes and reindeer on the way home from a shift. Tony is in charge of his story. “You had visions of me being in the nick,” he tells Apted fondly. “You made a great mistake.”

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