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.
Imagine trying to make a relevant comparison between a great gangster film, like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and a serial TV gangster show, like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. These are qualitatively different experiences. That's the difficulty with comparing the 7 Up series to your standard 2 hour documentary. The former requires more patience, because it unfolds its mysteries more gradually, with more nuance and detail.
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 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, 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.
Whether it is compelling television is of course a matter of opinion. Some viewers complain either that nothing happens or that it's all simply too mundane. These people are no more interesting than me and my friends. Why would we want to watch a TV show about ourselves when we can just be ourselves and see it live, 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.
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 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.
Imagine trying to make a relevant comparison between a great gangster film, like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and a serial TV gangster show, like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. These are qualitatively different experiences. That's the difficulty with comparing the 7 Up series to your standard 2 hour documentary. The former requires more patience, because it unfolds its mysteries more gradually, with more nuance and detail.
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 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, 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.
Whether it is compelling television is of course a matter of opinion. Some viewers complain either that nothing happens or that it's all simply too mundane. These people are no more interesting than me and my friends. Why would we want to watch a TV show about ourselves when we can just be ourselves and see it live, 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.
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 a big time documentary aficionado, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's work at the Best Documentaries on Netflix blog. Also, for a good time, have a look at his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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