Reviews
42 Up
The latest in Michael Apted’s fascinating series
about the lives of a disparate group of English children sees them truly
reaching middle age and beginning to contemplate all that it entails. In 1964 as
a one off project Apted and fellow workers at Granada Television in the UK
decided to emphasise the class divisions that they believed were rife in British
society by asking seven year old children from highly different backgrounds
several set questions. After a sequel when the children reached fourteen, and
again every seven years since, what started off as an attack on the class system
has become the longest running television documentary of all time; and one of
the most enduring. Eleven of the fourteen originally selected are still
participating; albeit some with considerable resentment. However what they have
given us is a unique look at the lives of ordinary English people through a
tumultuous time.
Their journeys through adolescence, young adulthood, and now fast approaching maturity have seen all of the subjects mellow somewhat. Ironically despite the huge upheavals in the British class system and the world at large since the early 1960s the children whose lives have been documented — with few exceptions — have fulfilled what would have been expected of them as children. Their original predictions of what they would be doing ‘as grown ups’ have generally turned out to be uncannily accurate. The children were originally chosen to be at opposite ends of the class spectrum with only two (one of whom now refuses to take part) being from the middle classes. On the whole their lives remain the same. Most of the working class children have maintained a modest standard of living; certainly none are wealthy, and the upper class children — with one exception — are very comfortable, working high paying jobs and living in affluent areas.
Several of the subjects have had unusual lives, especially Bruce and Neil. Bruce was originally an upper class boy saying that he wanted to ‘go to Africa and help people who are savages become more or less good’. He read maths at Oxford but then gave up a promising career in the City to become a maths teacher in an East London school. At age 35 he was working as a teacher in Bangladesh, and at age 42 he is back teaching in the East End and has recently been married for the first time. Bruce is also now central to the subject who is considered the ‘hero’ of the series: Neil the middle class Liverpool boy who missed out on getting into Oxford and ended up homeless in Scotland. 35 Up saw him living in a council flat in the Shetlands, convinced that he was insane and trying desperately just to stay alive. Partly through Bruce’s support, Neil is now a councillor for the Liberal Democrats in the London borough of Hackney, and while still relying on government benefits to survive, his political career is going well and his general mental and physical health has improved dramatically. This is one of the most heart warming stories to come out of the series, and is all the more poignant for being true.
While seeing their lives may not be what many people consider to be scintillating viewing, it is these people that provide the interest of the series as a factual vehicle. If they have all gone on to exceptional lives it might be more entertaining but it would also not be accurate of the world that they came from, and this is as much a chronicle of ordinary people’s lives as it is entertainment.
Uncle Psychosis
