For decades, we watched as their lives unfolded alongside our own.
Now, in what promises to be a tear-jerking finale, the 7 Up documentary series is coming to an end.
The 14 participants first appeared on our television screens in 1964 in an ITV World In Action special – aged just seven.
There have since been eight more films, released seven years apart and exploring how their lives had changed in the intervening years.
The stars, now pensioners and retirees, will appear in the final instalment 70 Up, which is to be released later this year.
Familiar returning faces include ‘cheeky chap’ Tony, a London cabbie who had wanted to be a jockey – and Neil, who dreamed of being an astronaut but experienced homelessness.
Public schoolboy Bruce, who wanted to be a missionary, will also appear, as well as Symon, who has fostered more than 120 children and has 12 grandchildren.
Viewers will also hear from Charles, a former participant who stopped appearing in the films after the age of 21.
Sue will discuss her marriage and her decades spent working at Queen Mary University of London, while Peter has news about his country music band. Lawyer Andrew, the prep school pupil who read The Financial Times, will return together with Suzy – once a young ballerina who hated her private school.
The show will remember the participants no longer with us, including Lynn, who died in 2013, and Nick, a farmer’s son who became a nuclear physicist and died in 2023. Meanwhile, Jackie, who attended the same primary school as Lynn and Sue in the 1960s, will also return.
The series was helmed by director Michael Apted from 1970 until his death in 2021. For the finale, Academy Award-winning director Asif Kapadia will step in.
Kapadia, who was behind documentaries about racing driver Ayrton Senna and singer Amy Winehouse, said he had named the series his favourite documentary of all time in 2014.
‘Directing 70 Up has been a dream project for me, the ultimate portrait of human life,’ he said.
ITV factual controller Jo Clinton-Davis said the series was a ‘truly distinctive landmark piece of filmmaking that has become part of our cultural fabric’.
She said: ‘In the evolving stories of our cast we see the universal themes of life play out… Ultimately, this is a tribute to the courage of all the cast who continue to share their lives with us so we can see our lives in them.’
