13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Tanya Sweeney: Watching real lives unfold from aged seven to 63 makes for an unmissable TV series
Today at 21:30
Even amid the rich smorgasbord of prestige TV offerings on the streamers, the showing up on the schedules of one TV show always makes my heart quicken with excitement. Recently, Virgin Media Television re-ran the latest instalment in Michael Apted's Seven Up series, which was filmed in 2022; we are now at 63 Up.
For the uninitiated, a quick intro: in 1964, filmmaker Apted found 14 British children, all at or around the age of seven, but from wildly different walks of life. Some were in the care home system; others in the malevolent bosom of the British public boarding school. From there, Apted checked back in with his subjects every seven years, and so we see these interviewees talk about their lives at 14, 28, 35, 42, and so on. The Jesuit motto 'give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man' is the series' backbone. The question is posed time and time again in the series — does any trace of your seven-year-old self still remain?
