If you're a Netflix fan looking to hook up with a top notch documentary, I strongly urge you to give the 7 Up series a close look. Up front, we'll concede that it won't be everyone's cup of tea. However, failing to at least check it out may be depriving yourself of a truly remarkable documentary experience.
This series is simultaneously a work of entertainment and sociological research. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
The explicitly stated premise of the original program was to get a glimpse into Britain of the year 2000. The assumption was that the life conditions under which they began, would determine the direction of their lives into the future. The first installment ended with a promise to catch up with them again in the new millennium.
However, a young researcher who worked on that original 1964 show would later go on to have a successful career as a film director. Michael Apted, who has a resume that stretches from the Chronicles of Narnia to James Bond, recognized a greater opportunity, here. Seven years later, he returned to the 14 subjects of the original show, to see what had happened in their second seven years of life. And he's gone back every seven years since.
At the time of writing, the newest installment has recently been released; in the U.S. it was in January 2013. In this installment, the kids of 1964 have turned 56 years old. It is a strange and compelling journey for those with the patience and curiosity to see it through.
It's true that not everyone finds it engaging TV. The less than enthusiastic have criticized it for being too slow and also too mundane. The protest is often along the lines: these people are no more interesting than my friends and acquaintances. Why bother with a TV show about people I already know and whose lives I can watch without the telly, thanks?
For those who get it, though, that's kind of the point. The series turns the mundane into the special simply by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism, humor and tragedy of all our small lives are revealed through the experience of these 14 people, growing into adulthood.
This is in a sense the original reality TV show. Except, unlike the circuses that go by that name, today, this reality, really does touch something profoundly, movingly and at times heartbreakingly real. When you watch the entire series, it is difficult not to develop a sense of personal relationship with the characters: to have favorites that you cheer for.
At the heart of the whole enterprise, though, is a bit of a paradox, which I'm never quite clear about how aware of it the documentarians are. The notion that it captures real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, this whole founding fabric seems peculiarly blind to the impact of the observer principle.
The observer principle is often, and I might add mistakenly, attributed to the physicist Heisenberg. There's no need though of a confused idea about sub-atomic physics to recognize that knowing their being watched will have an effect on how people act.
The less famous, but more apt comparison here would be the Hawthorne experiments, conducted at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. Sociologists studied the practices of the workers, but the former eventually came to the conclusion that the very experience of being studied actually changed the practices of the workers.
People who are being observed, and know that they are being observed, will tailor their behavior for the impression they want to make upon the observers. Such it would seem is human nature. We can never know, of course, how the lives of these 14 people might have been different, what other kinds of choices they might have made, what other directions their lives might have taken due to those different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. I can only say that intuitively it seems obvious to me that there would indeed have been different choices and maybe even life outcomes.
For me, possibly the most intriguing part of watching this long story of these 14 children grow into adulthood is precisely pondering that conundrum. In ways both intended and unintended, this documentary is a remarked record: of human life and perhaps human hubris.
This series is simultaneously a work of entertainment and sociological research. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
The explicitly stated premise of the original program was to get a glimpse into Britain of the year 2000. The assumption was that the life conditions under which they began, would determine the direction of their lives into the future. The first installment ended with a promise to catch up with them again in the new millennium.
However, a young researcher who worked on that original 1964 show would later go on to have a successful career as a film director. Michael Apted, who has a resume that stretches from the Chronicles of Narnia to James Bond, recognized a greater opportunity, here. Seven years later, he returned to the 14 subjects of the original show, to see what had happened in their second seven years of life. And he's gone back every seven years since.
At the time of writing, the newest installment has recently been released; in the U.S. it was in January 2013. In this installment, the kids of 1964 have turned 56 years old. It is a strange and compelling journey for those with the patience and curiosity to see it through.
It's true that not everyone finds it engaging TV. The less than enthusiastic have criticized it for being too slow and also too mundane. The protest is often along the lines: these people are no more interesting than my friends and acquaintances. Why bother with a TV show about people I already know and whose lives I can watch without the telly, thanks?
For those who get it, though, that's kind of the point. The series turns the mundane into the special simply by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism, humor and tragedy of all our small lives are revealed through the experience of these 14 people, growing into adulthood.
This is in a sense the original reality TV show. Except, unlike the circuses that go by that name, today, this reality, really does touch something profoundly, movingly and at times heartbreakingly real. When you watch the entire series, it is difficult not to develop a sense of personal relationship with the characters: to have favorites that you cheer for.
At the heart of the whole enterprise, though, is a bit of a paradox, which I'm never quite clear about how aware of it the documentarians are. The notion that it captures real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, this whole founding fabric seems peculiarly blind to the impact of the observer principle.
The observer principle is often, and I might add mistakenly, attributed to the physicist Heisenberg. There's no need though of a confused idea about sub-atomic physics to recognize that knowing their being watched will have an effect on how people act.
The less famous, but more apt comparison here would be the Hawthorne experiments, conducted at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. Sociologists studied the practices of the workers, but the former eventually came to the conclusion that the very experience of being studied actually changed the practices of the workers.
People who are being observed, and know that they are being observed, will tailor their behavior for the impression they want to make upon the observers. Such it would seem is human nature. We can never know, of course, how the lives of these 14 people might have been different, what other kinds of choices they might have made, what other directions their lives might have taken due to those different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. I can only say that intuitively it seems obvious to me that there would indeed have been different choices and maybe even life outcomes.
For me, possibly the most intriguing part of watching this long story of these 14 children grow into adulthood is precisely pondering that conundrum. In ways both intended and unintended, this documentary is a remarked record: of human life and perhaps human hubris.
About the Author:
If you're a big time documentary fan, you need to check out Mickey Jhonny's posts at the Best Documentaries on Netflix blog. Also, for a good time, have a look at his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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