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- Hacker News
- A genuinely interesting article. I'd like to know more about how their lives changed throughout the years...
...although there is no reason to want to know that. They are regular people like the neighbor and the mailmen. Gosh, the things TV make us want to do!
by glimshe - The Up series is genuinely interesting though and previous installments directed by the late Michael Apted were critically acclaimed. The fact that these people are normal British people (from various socioeconomic classes) is the point -- you can look at them at different ages and see how the intersection of personality, ability, and class affected their development.by jhbadger
- > Apted acknowledged flaws with the show, saying it was a "horrible error" to have only four women in a cast of 14 when making the original selection
I am more surprised they could only found 14 white kids even in 1964!
A show like this would be very different today.
by unpopularopp - One of the participants, Symon, is mixed-race.by gnfargbl
- Why is that surprising? In 1961, the UK was 98.5% British White. By 1971, it was still 97% British White. That fourteen people of that time period would be British White isn't unlikely.
- by jrg123
- I learned of the 7 Up from the case of Jason Arday, an unexpexted silver lining in an otherwise dismal affairby nikanj
- Whats the link?
- I have followed the Up Series for decades, although fewer than six, and I am truly sorrowful at its end. When I was young they felt so far away from me and as I've gotten older I felt as though I have been catching up.by vr46
- >as I've gotten older:
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>>We get wise too late,
>>and old too soon.
>>–Danish proverb
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Everybody I've ever recommended the "7 Up" series to has thanked me. I rewatch them all, every few years – my first viewing was right before my own 21st birthday (decades ago).
- This is what I thought "Reality TV" should have been. Genuinely interesting content about real people in the real world.
Somehow they managed to just create soap opera with bad actors instead.
by lordnacho - Reality TV in Japan is pretty nice. People mostly just spend time driving around the country talking to random people and eating tasty food.
Sometimes they vary the thing and do it overseas.
by Aeolun - "Reality TV" as it is now was born from a writer's strike. Producers couldn't outright give the people scripts and written lines, but they could stand off camera and feed them lines off the cuff in the style of leading questions. If anyone thinks these shows are not intentionally pushed in the directions the producers want, then they just are not paying attention. Which is precisely what these producers wantby dylan604
- 7up is truly one of the most astonishing and ambitious pieces of television ever made. When I found it, I couldn't stop watching it and I learned a ton from it. Highly recommended!by loevborg
- Its reach exceeds its grasp, but what a concept to reach for. Truly distilling seven years of a life into a single couple‐hour documentary is obviously impossible, let alone seven years of fourteen lives, yet in trying it gets partway there, and later episodes get even more interesting by acknowledging the limitations. A phenomenal series.by bentley
- Nick Hitchon was a professor of mine in college. He seemed like a genuinely very nice guy and took the time to learn everyone's name, despite how large the classes were.