And so the great experiment begun by Granada Television in 1964 is over. That year, Seven Up! introduced the viewing public to 14 primary school children – 10 boys and four girls from a range of backgrounds – who would become part of an ongoing documentary project that returned to film them at regular intervals and interrogate the truth of the Jesuitical motto “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man”.
Seven Up!, part of ITV’s flagship World in Action series, was directed by Paul Almond but thereafter the enterprise became synonymous with Michael Apted, who originally helped find the children and took over the making of the programmes. He died in 2021, two years after completing 63 Up. It had been thought the series would end there but when one of the participants, Nick Hitchon – a Yorkshire farmer’s son who grew up to be a nuclear scientist – called one of the team to say that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wanted to give one last interview, a final episode was commissioned.
