70 Up Ends Six-Decade Run as Final Film Airs on ITV
Sixty-two years after cameras first met 14 seven-year-olds, their story is coming to a close. The two-part film 70 Up airs on Tuesday evening in the U.K. on ITV, and the broadcaster says it will be the last in the Up series.
It began in 1964. Canadian director Paul Almond filmed 14 British schoolchildren aged seven for Seven Up!, a documentary about lives across class divides, according to Variety. British director Michael Apted took over seven years later for 14 Up. He then returned every seven years.
That routine held for decades. Apted produced a further seven films spaced seven years apart, following the same group from childhood into middle age and beyond. It made the series a longitudinal documentary, meaning the same people are filmed at intervals across a lifetime.
70 Up picks up that thread at age 70. It follows 12 surviving participants as they reflect on their lives. Two of the original group, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, died during the course of the series.
The new instalment is directed by Asif Kapadia, who took over after Apted's death in 2021, as reported by The Guardian. ITV describes the programme as returning to meet the people first seen as 7-year-olds as they reflect on life at 70, in its listing for 70 Up. ITV lists the film as Series 10, Episode 1 of The 7 Up Collection, noting the group turn 70.
A U.S. broadcast had not been finalised at the time of Variety's report, published on 15 September. U.K. viewers get an early introduction on ITV's This Morning, with Series 38, Episode 181 featuring presenters Ben and Cat meeting the stars of 70 Up.
The decision to stop was confirmed by ITV factual controller Jo Clinton-Davis. She worked on 56 Up, 63 Up and 70 Up. She told Variety that watching the Up series as a child made her want to work in television. She added she is as categorical as anybody can be in television that the two-part 70 Up will be the last.
What makes this stand out is simple scale. No new cast. No reset. Just the same lives, revisited every seven years until there are no more seventieth birthdays to film.
