This snapshot of post-war Britain shows how much we've changed: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS gives the final chapter of 7 Up five stars

70 Up

Rating:  Five stars 

Rating:

On a daytrip to London Zoo in 1963, with a bunch of lively seven-year-olds, documentary director Michael Apted declared them to be 'Britain's future' and 'a glimpse of what England will be like in the Year 2000'.

The same could have been said of any classful of children, of course. But the youngsters of Granada TV's Seven Up were different, because they'd been picked to represent the spectrum of the country's social classes.

Plummy young chaps from prep schools, sparky little madams from east London, a cheeky Cockney lad, a couple of wary boys from a care home and two innocent cherubs from Liverpool suburbs made up most of the gang.

A lifetime later, the two-parter 70 Up is bidding them farewell. One, librarian Lynn, died in 2013, and another, nuclear engineer Nick, succumbed to cancer after filming for this tenth and final two-part instalment.

It seems a wise decision to end the project now. Apted himself died in 2019, after a successful second career in Hollywood that included helming a Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough.

Most of the participants seem in robust health, and enjoying their retirements. It would be deeply tasteless to keep returning, deep into old age, until the last of them is gone.

But the second part, now available on ITVX, doesn't shy away from the inevitable.

Hunting enthusiast John, a barrister, says cheerfully that he hopes to break his neck 'just as the hounds are about to go home'. 

Family man Symon, who has provided foster care for 130 children with his wife Vienetta, believes death will be 'an open door to somewhere else'.

Conceived as a study of Britain's class system, what this series has in fact become is a snapshot of its post-war history. Nick compared it to time-lapse photography: 'It's amazing to see a flower grow and then decay in a couple of minutes.'

We can watch the children grow and age into adults, often all but unrecognisable between one seven-year stage and the next. Over the decades, we have also seen them switch careers, marry, have children and grandchildren, and in several cases leave Britain altogether, for the States, Australia or Europe.

But what's most interesting is to witness how society has changed and evolved with them. Some things are superficial, like the fashions and the cigarettes. 

Others are more fundamental — such as Apted's description of Symon as 'illegitimate'. When did you last hear that word?

Apted, such an outspoken Leftie in the 1960s, now appears horribly outdated in many of his attitudes. 

He was dismissive of the four girls, referring to them collectively as 'Jackie and her friends', and clearly assumed their life's purpose was to be housewives and mothers.

More tellingly still, 13 of the children were white, and only one was mixed-race. None were Muslim, or immigrants, and all spoke English as their first language. Times change.