Here’s to life… TV’s 7 Up gang are turning 70 – and getting ready for their emotional finale

For decades, we watched their lives evolve alongside ours.

Now we are coming to the end of the 7 Up documentary series, which promises a chilling finale.

The 14 participants first appeared on our television screens in the ITV World In Action special in 1964; They were only seven years old.

Since then, eight more films have been released seven years apart, depicting how their lives have changed in the intervening years.

The now retired and retired stars will appear in the final episode of 70 Up, which will air later this year.

Familiar faces returning include ‘cheeky man’ Tony, a London taxi driver who wants to be a jockey, and Neil, who dreams of being an astronaut but is experiencing homelessness.

In addition to Bruce, a public student who wants to become a missionary, Symon, who cares for more than 120 children and has 12 grandchildren, will also appear.

Viewers will also hear the voice of Charles, a former participant who stopped appearing in films after the age of 21.

Sue will discuss her marriage and her decades working at Queen Mary University of London, while Peter gets news on his country band. Lawyer Andrew, a prep school student who read The Financial Times, will return alongside Suzy, a young ballet dancer who once hated her private school.

The movies began with ‘7 Up’ in 1964, following fourteen children who were seven years old at the time.

Symon and Susan, aged seven. They are both members of the 7 Up gang

Pictured left to right: Suzanne Lack and Jackie Bassett, aged seven, on the TV show 7 Up

The program will remember participants who are no longer with us, including Lynn, who died in 2013, and Nick, a nuclear physicist and farmer’s son who died in 2023. Meanwhile, Jackie, who went to the same primary school as Lynn and Sue in the 1960s, will also return.

The series was directed by director Michael Apted from 1970 until his death in 2021. In the finale, Academy Award-winning director Asif Kapadia will step in.

Kapadia, who is behind the documentaries about racing driver Ayrton Senna and singer Amy Winehouse, said in 2014 that he named the series his favorite documentary of all time.

‘Directing 70 Up has been a dream project for me, the ultimate portrait of human life,’ he said.

ITV fact checker Jo Clinton-Davis said the series was ‘a truly distinctive landmark of filmmaking that has become part of our cultural fabric’.

He said: ‘We see the universal themes of life played out in the evolving stories of our cast… Ultimately it is a tribute to the courage of the entire cast who continue to share their lives with us so we can see our own lives.’