When you're looking for the best documentaries on Netflix, you really do need to give some consideration to the 7 Up Series. It may not be to everyone's taste, but you'd be robbing yourself of the opportunity to experience something quite remarkable if you don't at least give it a try.
This series of films manages to be simultaneously a great achievement in documentary entertainment and a genuine contribution to sociological insight. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
It's the difference between a great gangster film, like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and a great long arch TV gangster series, like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. It's a totally different kind of experience. The latter is slower, much more nuanced, and requires patience to allow it to unfold.
The 7 Up series began in 1964, when British TV producers brought together 14 children from what they perceived at the time as a representative sampling of British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
There was an overt premise underlying this 1964 program: the expectation was that the show was providing a glimpse of Britain in the year 2000. The less obvious but equally vital assumption was that these kids' backgrounds would direct the course of their lives into the future. The conclusion of the 1964 installment promised to drop in on these 14 sometime in the 21st century, to see how things had turned out.
However, a young researcher who worked on that original 1964 show would later go on to have a successful career as a film director. Michael Apted, who has a resume that stretches from the Chronicles of Narnia to James Bond, recognized a greater opportunity, here. Seven years later, he returned to the 14 subjects of the original show, to see what had happened in their second seven years of life. And he's gone back every seven years since.
At the time of writing, the most recent installment was released in the U.S. in January 2013. The children were then 56 years old. This is a strange journey for those with the patience and curiosity to stick with it.
As you might imagine, not everyone considers it compelling television. Critiques complain that it's too slow and too mundane. It's not unfair to observe that these 14 people are not especially more fascinating than the people most of us know through friendship and acquaintance. So why bother watching a TV show when you could just watch your friends, as it were?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
When you think about it, what we have here is the original reality TV show. The difference is that in contrast to the circuses going by that name, today, this reality touches something that is deeply, and at times heartbreakingly, real. Those who have become hooked on the series inevitably come to feel personal attachment with some of the kids-adults as their struggle through their own personal life challenges.
Yet, through it all, there is an irony underlying the entire enterprise. The idea that the series is capturing real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, all seems to have overlooked the observer principle.
This is often, though somewhat confusedly, attributed to the physicist Heisenberg. Still, you don't need sub-atomic physics to understand that when people know they're being observed, it can change their behavior.
Though it's less trendy as a pop reference, the appropriate comparison is to the Hawthorne experiments. These were a series of studies conducted by sociologists at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The point was to observe the behavior of the workers in the plant. It eventually became clear, though, that the very experience of being studied actually changed the behavior of the workers.
Being observed, and more importantly, awareness of being observed, changed the actions of the observed and so the results of the observation. It is of course impossible to know how the lives of these 14 people might have been different if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It hardly seems far fetched, though, to imagine that some choices might have been different.
For me, possibly the most intriguing part of watching this long story of these 14 children grow into adulthood is precisely pondering that conundrum. In ways both intended and unintended, this documentary is a remarked record: of human life and perhaps human hubris.
This series of films manages to be simultaneously a great achievement in documentary entertainment and a genuine contribution to sociological insight. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
It's the difference between a great gangster film, like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and a great long arch TV gangster series, like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. It's a totally different kind of experience. The latter is slower, much more nuanced, and requires patience to allow it to unfold.
The 7 Up series began in 1964, when British TV producers brought together 14 children from what they perceived at the time as a representative sampling of British society. Their diversity was in their gender, race and economic condition.
There was an overt premise underlying this 1964 program: the expectation was that the show was providing a glimpse of Britain in the year 2000. The less obvious but equally vital assumption was that these kids' backgrounds would direct the course of their lives into the future. The conclusion of the 1964 installment promised to drop in on these 14 sometime in the 21st century, to see how things had turned out.
However, a young researcher who worked on that original 1964 show would later go on to have a successful career as a film director. Michael Apted, who has a resume that stretches from the Chronicles of Narnia to James Bond, recognized a greater opportunity, here. Seven years later, he returned to the 14 subjects of the original show, to see what had happened in their second seven years of life. And he's gone back every seven years since.
At the time of writing, the most recent installment was released in the U.S. in January 2013. The children were then 56 years old. This is a strange journey for those with the patience and curiosity to stick with it.
As you might imagine, not everyone considers it compelling television. Critiques complain that it's too slow and too mundane. It's not unfair to observe that these 14 people are not especially more fascinating than the people most of us know through friendship and acquaintance. So why bother watching a TV show when you could just watch your friends, as it were?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
When you think about it, what we have here is the original reality TV show. The difference is that in contrast to the circuses going by that name, today, this reality touches something that is deeply, and at times heartbreakingly, real. Those who have become hooked on the series inevitably come to feel personal attachment with some of the kids-adults as their struggle through their own personal life challenges.
Yet, through it all, there is an irony underlying the entire enterprise. The idea that the series is capturing real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, all seems to have overlooked the observer principle.
This is often, though somewhat confusedly, attributed to the physicist Heisenberg. Still, you don't need sub-atomic physics to understand that when people know they're being observed, it can change their behavior.
Though it's less trendy as a pop reference, the appropriate comparison is to the Hawthorne experiments. These were a series of studies conducted by sociologists at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The point was to observe the behavior of the workers in the plant. It eventually became clear, though, that the very experience of being studied actually changed the behavior of the workers.
Being observed, and more importantly, awareness of being observed, changed the actions of the observed and so the results of the observation. It is of course impossible to know how the lives of these 14 people might have been different if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It hardly seems far fetched, though, to imagine that some choices might have been different.
For me, possibly the most intriguing part of watching this long story of these 14 children grow into adulthood is precisely pondering that conundrum. In ways both intended and unintended, this documentary is a remarked record: of human life and perhaps human hubris.
About the Author:
If you're an enthusiastic documentary aficionado, you'll want to follow Mickey Jhonny's posts at the Best Documentaries on Netflix blog. Also, for some good fun, give a read to his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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