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Seven Up!: Up, Up, and Away

Seven Up!: Up, Up, and Away

Last updated on: August 29, 2026 at 6:30 pm by Chase Padusniak

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Seven Up!: Up, Up, and Away 2026-08-29T18:30:23-04:00 Chase Padusniak

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The 2019 DVD cover for the series
Source: Wikimedia
Fair use

I don’t remember when I first heard about the Up series (1964-Present). I don’t even know why I would. Its British focus, long run, and interest in the nature of time, aging, and change do not seem like they would have appealed to me at age 15. But who knows? They’ve sat somewhere back there for the better part of a decade or more. Their time would come.

And so, it has. Not long ago, I took to my couch with my wife and watched the first entry, Seven Up! (1964). It’s strange to see something made for TV feel so vital and intellectually curious. Again, this might be a question of British public broadcasting, a world of waves not yet ruled by the cultural mores of US imperialism. Or it might be that sometimes goodness finds a way. In any case, the show’s stated purpose (and it was intended as a one off) is to catch the shop stewards and executives of the year 2000 as tikes. We really were obsessed with the millennium back then. Was it worth it?

But for all the 60s futurism, the real value of the program is its simplicity. Fourteen kids who comes from different walks of life end up at party and an adventure playground that appears to be ruins left over from the Blitz turned to Baby Boom purposes. We learn bits and pieces about their background, personalities, and concerns. The kids are only seven, and so they can’t help but be hilarious. When asked about race, one little girl calls herself “pinkish.” Another boy says he doesn’t like girls because they don’t like to play “rough and tumble.”

At the same time, the differences in their personalities already seem apparent, if not fully developed. A couple have sad eyes, poised on the edge of tears. Others have a self-seriousness about them that bodes, I think, poorly. Still others radiate joy no matter what. I can’t say how these will continue or not. But that’s the point!

The exciting thing about the series is its ambition. We will follow these children until death does us part. And given that the series has had three different directors, even the death of newsmen won’t end the experiment. I haven’t read ahead, but I assume even the deaths of the participants haven’t ended it.

I can’t help but feel special joy in this project beyond even Linklater’s Boyhood (2014). A public TV station aiming to map the contours of human existence across as the as-yet-unknown end of history?

They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Or, well, at least for not much longer.

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