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 is simultaneously a work of entertainment and sociological research. 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 explicit premise to that first doc; the idea was that it provided a look into the future. The guiding assumption of the show's framing was that the diverse life conditions of the children would determine their life outcomes in the future. At its end, the show promises to catch up with the 14, then adults, in the next millennium.
However, director Michael Apted, who had worked as a researcher on that original installment, had another idea. Seven years later, he took the cameras back, to record what had transpired in the children's second seven years of life. And he's been going back every seven years ever since.
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?
Fair enough; however, for those who relate to the show, such criticism seems to miss the whole point. The magic of the 7 Up series is the way that it transform the banal into the sublime. Simply turning the camera upon it elevates in a sense the daily heroism, humor and tragedy of all our lives into something worthy of narrative.
This is in a sense the original reality TV show. Except, unlike the circuses that go by that name, today, this reality, really does touch something profoundly, movingly and at times heartbreakingly real. When you watch the entire series, it is difficult not to develop a sense of personal relationship with the characters: to have favorites that you cheer for.
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.
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.
It turns out - and is this really a surprise - that when people are conscious of being observed they mold their behavior in ways suited to make a desired impression upon the observer. Without access to some kind of parallel universe, we can obviously never really know how the lives of these 14 people might have gone in other directions, led by the making of different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It doesn't though strike me as especially far fetched to conceive there might have been some significant differences.
Pondering that conundrum may well be the most intriguing thought to reflect upon while watching those 14 youngsters making their way through life in this remarkable documentary.
This series is simultaneously a work of entertainment and sociological research. 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 explicit premise to that first doc; the idea was that it provided a look into the future. The guiding assumption of the show's framing was that the diverse life conditions of the children would determine their life outcomes in the future. At its end, the show promises to catch up with the 14, then adults, in the next millennium.
However, director Michael Apted, who had worked as a researcher on that original installment, had another idea. Seven years later, he took the cameras back, to record what had transpired in the children's second seven years of life. And he's been going back every seven years ever since.
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?
Fair enough; however, for those who relate to the show, such criticism seems to miss the whole point. The magic of the 7 Up series is the way that it transform the banal into the sublime. Simply turning the camera upon it elevates in a sense the daily heroism, humor and tragedy of all our lives into something worthy of narrative.
This is in a sense the original reality TV show. Except, unlike the circuses that go by that name, today, this reality, really does touch something profoundly, movingly and at times heartbreakingly real. When you watch the entire series, it is difficult not to develop a sense of personal relationship with the characters: to have favorites that you cheer for.
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.
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.
It turns out - and is this really a surprise - that when people are conscious of being observed they mold their behavior in ways suited to make a desired impression upon the observer. Without access to some kind of parallel universe, we can obviously never really know how the lives of these 14 people might have gone in other directions, led by the making of different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It doesn't though strike me as especially far fetched to conceive there might have been some significant differences.
Pondering that conundrum may well be the most intriguing thought to reflect upon while watching those 14 youngsters making their way through life in this remarkable documentary.
About the Author:
If you're a big time documentary aficionado, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's posts at the Best Documentaries on Netflix site. Also, for some good fun, have a look at his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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