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.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing 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, there was a young researcher on that original installment who was to go on to have an extremely successful career as a film director, working on a range of material stretching from the Gorillas in the Mist to 007. Michael Apted had a different idea about the potential of that project begun in 1964. Instead of waiting for the 21st century, he took his cameras back to catch up with the kids seven years later, when they where 14. And he's gone back every seven years ever since. The result has been one of the most extraordinary cinematic documents of all time.
At the time of writing, the newest installment has recently been released; in the U.S. it was in January 2013. In this installment, the kids of 1964 have turned 56 years old. It is a strange and compelling journey for those with the patience and curiosity to see it through.
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 those who get it, though, that's kind of the point. The series turns the mundane into the special simply by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism, humor and tragedy of all our small lives are revealed through the experience of these 14 people, growing into adulthood.
It is a matter of fact that this really is the original reality TV show. There is though a world of difference between it and the circuses that go by that name, nowadays. The 7 Up series truly does get at something profound, moving and at times heartbreakingly real. The aficionados of the series almost invariably come to feel deep personal attachment to one or more of the 14. They've become part of our lives.
There is though another level to all this that I think makes the series even that much more fascinating. An odd irony seems to me to run through the entire enterprise. The core idea that real lives are being documented; the original premise about socio-economic origins unfolding more or less directly into later life outcomes, all seems premised on overlooking the effect of the observer principle.
The observer principle is fashionably, though actually rather mistakenly, associated with a physicist named Heisenberg. People who make this association usually reveal ignorance about what Heisenberg was doing and what he actually discovered. Nonetheless, one is not in need of sub-atomic physics to appreciate the potential impact upon human behavior by one's being aware of being observed.
The less famous, but more apt comparison here would be the Hawthorne experiments, conducted at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. Sociologists studied the practices of the workers, but the former eventually came to the conclusion that the very experience of being studied actually changed the practices 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.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
The 7 Up series was inaugurated in 1964, at the dawn of Beatlemania and the beginning what we've come to call the 60s. British TV producers came up with the idea to collect 14 children from diverse backgrounds, representing 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, there was a young researcher on that original installment who was to go on to have an extremely successful career as a film director, working on a range of material stretching from the Gorillas in the Mist to 007. Michael Apted had a different idea about the potential of that project begun in 1964. Instead of waiting for the 21st century, he took his cameras back to catch up with the kids seven years later, when they where 14. And he's gone back every seven years ever since. The result has been one of the most extraordinary cinematic documents of all time.
At the time of writing, the newest installment has recently been released; in the U.S. it was in January 2013. In this installment, the kids of 1964 have turned 56 years old. It is a strange and compelling journey for those with the patience and curiosity to see it through.
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 those who get it, though, that's kind of the point. The series turns the mundane into the special simply by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism, humor and tragedy of all our small lives are revealed through the experience of these 14 people, growing into adulthood.
It is a matter of fact that this really is the original reality TV show. There is though a world of difference between it and the circuses that go by that name, nowadays. The 7 Up series truly does get at something profound, moving and at times heartbreakingly real. The aficionados of the series almost invariably come to feel deep personal attachment to one or more of the 14. They've become part of our lives.
There is though another level to all this that I think makes the series even that much more fascinating. An odd irony seems to me to run through the entire enterprise. The core idea that real lives are being documented; the original premise about socio-economic origins unfolding more or less directly into later life outcomes, all seems premised on overlooking the effect of the observer principle.
The observer principle is fashionably, though actually rather mistakenly, associated with a physicist named Heisenberg. People who make this association usually reveal ignorance about what Heisenberg was doing and what he actually discovered. Nonetheless, one is not in need of sub-atomic physics to appreciate the potential impact upon human behavior by one's being aware of being observed.
The less famous, but more apt comparison here would be the Hawthorne experiments, conducted at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. Sociologists studied the practices of the workers, but the former eventually came to the conclusion that the very experience of being studied actually changed the practices 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 fan, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's posts at the Best Documentaries on Netflix site. Also, for a good time, have a look at his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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