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TV and Radio
September 16, 2005
Times2
Last night's TV: Mixed feelings at the family reunion
Ian Johns
EVERY SEVEN years they come along, stay for a few days and ask you lots of personal questions.
No, it?s not the parents visiting again. It?s Michael Apted and his crew playing catch-up with the people they first interviewed as seven-year-olds in 1964. 49 Up (ITV1) is the latest progress report. If the project were not a continuing series of time capsules, it would deserve one of its own, but will the Blue Peter garden still be there in which to bury it when the series reaches its natural conclusion?
The voiceover in a clip from the original 7 Up wondered who would become ?the shop steward and the executive of the year 2000?. This reflected the programme?s desire to test class-bound assumptions by tracing the lives of working-class and upper middle-class children. But the series?s close-up on the personal has sometimes made this series more soap opera than social history. After the dramatic rapids of adolescence, we entered the less contrasting waters of marriage, the workaday world, the deaths of parents and balancing the joys and woes of nurturing teenage children. The series seemed more the television equivalent of catching up with old friends or news at a family reunion.
But like any family drama, the emotional stakes get higher as the characters get older and take on more responsibility and with 49 Up we are getting the sense of a changing Britain. There are now shared parental worries that today?s world is a tougher place for kids faced with drink, drugs and less chances of social mobility. Tony, the London cabbie who has overcome marital difficulties to own a second home in Spain, now sees his role as being ?the backbone for our kids?.
He also regrets how his childhood East End had changed with ?other cultures buying all my own tradition up?. And the maths teacher Bruce, an idealist even at seven, who had taught in the East End and Bangladesh, admits that he had been ?worn down? by inner-city teaching. He?s now a master at an independent school in St Albans. ?Dreams go as everyday life takes over,? he remarked wistfully.
Even more interesting is how 49 Up reflects our media-savvy times. Jackie, last seen struggling to raise three boys and staving off rheumatoid arthritis, questioned Apted about his portrayal of her over the years. She made it clear that she was being interviewed on her terms: ?This series may be the first one that?s about us rather than about your perception of us.?
A project originally designed to follow the natural course of people?s lives is now a tangible part of them. For Suzy, this scrutiny remains torture ? she stills refers to her ?privileged childhood? like an apology ? and she intimated that she?ll bow out. Just imagine if the series had started in the Big Brother era of camera-hungry show-offs ? they would be begging for Apted to return within a month, not seven years. The update on Neil, who eventually pulled back from the brink of destitution, is inevitably being saved for next week. Nowadays even a project such as the 7 Up series needs to turn its subjects into a dramatic tease. "