The Up series

The Up series is a series of documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were all seven years old. A new episode is filmed and broadcast every seven years.

Although the initial episode stated "We brought these children together because we wanted a glimpse of England in the year 2000..", the series has gone beyond the turn of the century and has continued to the present day with the latest edition, 63 Up, being shown in 2019.

The original participants, four girls and ten boys, were from varied backgrounds (private school, public school, working class, upper class, town, countryside etc.). Each subject is filmed in about two days and the interview itself takes more than six hours, in which they are invited to talk on camera about their ambitions, feelings, values and experiences. One male subject stopped appearing after 3 editions, one female chose not to take part in the 2019 edition and one female died in 2013. Other subjects have chosen not to take part in certain years. Only nine have been filmed and interviewed in every edition.

Director Michael Apted (a researcher on the first edition) has stated that it was an error to have included only four girls in the original group, since the role of women in Britain has been the biggest societal change in the lifespan of the show.