The Up Series began in 1963 with Granada Television's experiment Seven Up! which took a cross-section of children at age seven and asked them about their hopes for the future.

Michael Apted, working as an assistant to the orignial director Paul Almond was so fascinated by the idea that he proposed to film new material from as many of the 14 children as he could every seven years to mark their progress throughout their lives.

The outcome was one of the most absorbing sociological experiments ever recorded on film, an exploration of the Jesuit maxim: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”

Success, failure, marriage and childbirth, poverty, illness – both physical and mental, almost every possible element of the human experience passes before Michael Apted's camera in a series that has been attempted by other countries and satirised on The Simpsons.  

Flming for the next instalment, 56 Up, is expected in late 2011 or early 2012.

Tags for this entry: Claire Lewis, Documentary, Michael Apted, Up Series