In 1963, Granada Television interviewed fourteen British seven-year-olds, hoping to provide a “glimpse of England in the year 2000.” The focus of this documentary, titled Seven Up, was actually not on what Britain might look like in the future but on what class meant to British society at that time. By selecting children from widely divergent class backgrounds, the film hoped to show how class conditioned almost every aspect of their lives, including their home lives, their schooling, their leisure pursuits, and their hopes for the future.

In 1970, Michael Apted (a researcher on the first film) decided to revisit the children in Seven Plus Seven. Apted has continued to do so every seven years, and the latest installment in the series is 49 Up, shown on British television in the fall of 2005 and given limited theatrical release in the United States in the fall of 2006.

49 Up exemplifies the continuing transformation of this series, which has long abandoned the idea that class is the master key for understanding these individual lives. Class remained to the forefront in Seven Plus Seven, and to a lesser extent in 21 Up, but has been of decreasing prominence ever since. The original film's emphasis on class worked best when Apted's subjects were still at school—at age seven some children were able to identify the specific Oxbridge college they hoped to attend, while another poignantly asked “what does university mean?” And indeed the assumption of the first film that these children's educational futures were mapped out already was largely borne out by subsequent events—four of the five children enrolled in private boarding schools at age seven went to university, while none of the working-class children from the first film did so.

As Apted's subjects moved into adulthood, however, the films began to evolve in a new direction. The focus became more personal, on understanding the impact of key events in the life cycle—marriage (and in some cases divorce), children, and the death of parents. The most affecting moments in the series have focused on these intimate details, and its subjects are less and less stock characters in a morality play about class and more fully rounded individuals who are of interest in their own right. Class has not become irrelevant in these films—at forty-nine those from more affluent backgrounds tend to be financially more comfortable and in better health. However, 49 Up clearly has given up on the idea that these individuals are best understood as representatives of a specific social class. As Apted says in an interview that accompanies the DVD version of the film, “those arguments weren’t meaningful anymore.”

If the films are no longer intent on documenting the inequities of the British class system, can their subjects be taken as a representative sample of contemporary British society? The answer is clearly no, for reasons having to do with the films’ original intent. When the children were selected in 1963, they were chosen with little consideration for any factor outside of class. Even in terms of class, as Apted has admitted, the films were heavily skewed toward the top and the bottom of the social hierarchy. Five of the original fourteen subjects were enrolled at prestigious boarding schools, while four were working-class children from the East End of London. An additional two were living in a children's home. Only two were from a middle-class background, and the absence of the middle classes is the series's greatest flaw as a sociological study. The selection of the children also paid no attention to other factors that might have resulted in a more representative sample of ’60s Britain. Only four of the fourteen were girls, and only one was from an ethnic minority community. Even regional diversity was given short shrift—there were two boys from Liverpool and a farmer's son from the Yorkshire dales, while the rest who could be clearly placed were from London. Due to his choice to follow the lives of these fourteen people (some of whom have dropped out from time to time—the current film includes twelve), Apted is stuck with the blind spots of the first film. His subjects are heavily male, overwhelmingly white, and most live in and around London. As a result 49 Up is certainly not a balanced portrait of Britain today, and in the interview that accompanies the DVD Apted seems to explicitly reject the notion that the films have anything in particular to say about contemporary Britain: “People say, well, is this a portrait of England, and I say, well, this is a portrait of people who were born in 1956.”

If this series of films has lost its original raison d’être and if it cannot be taken as a representative sample of British society, then what exactly is it? This is a question that is sometimes asked by the subjects themselves. One of these subjects, among Apted's most reluctant participants, compares the series to reality television “with the added bonus that you can see people grow old, lose their hair, get fat. Fascinating I’m sure, but does it have any value? That's a different question.”

The comparison to reality television, however, understates Apted's achievement, and the current film does offer interesting insights. The films are not explicitly political, although there is occasional grumbling about the Labour government (from both wealthy barrister John and London cab driver Tony). Despite the focus on the personal, however, some important trends in contemporary Britain are reflected in these individual lives. The transformation of the urban working class, for example, is exemplified by the abandonment of the East End by its former inhabitants. Tony and Jackie, two of the original East Enders, moved out long ago, and in 49 Up both recall the East End of their childhood as a tightly knit community of neighbors. Both, however, also claim to have recreated this neighborliness in new surroundings—in one case in a Spanish vacation home and in another on a Scottish housing estate. Sue, another East Ender, has also moved out because, she says, the East End has “changed a lot.” Tony is more explicit, claiming that he no longer feels at home in the East End because “other cultures” now predominate. It is typical of Apted's style in these films that no explanation for this comment is provided—he tends to let his subjects do most of the talking.

The interpretive frame that was used to shape the early films has been discarded, and Apted has chosen to not attempt to impose a new one. Apted now allows his subjects to seek their own meanings for both the films and their lives, and it is this search for meaning in the ordinary details of life that is the main source of the film's continued appeal. Neil, one of the boys from Liverpool, was a bright and engaging seven-year-old who was homeless at twenty-eight. His recovery from this low point has been remarkable—by forty-two he was living in London and was a member of Hackney Council, and at forty-nine he is still involved in politics as a councilor in Cumbria. The power of Neil's story has nothing to do with his class background—in his case particularly, it is largely irrelevant. But his story does highlight the way that these films have shifted from a focus on grand societal narrative to an examination of the individual quest for meaning. As Neil says at the end of 49 Up, “Perhaps there isn’t actually any more to life than that, than just being what you are.”

Despite the lack of grand interpretive frameworks or profound sociological analysis, 49 Up shows that these films retain their ability to fascinate and that these ordinary lives continue to provide insight, albeit of a somewhat diffuse kind, into contemporary Britain. One of the great challenges in teaching history is to make the ordinary people of the past come alive, and there is no doubt that these films can have a profound pedagogical impact. Despite their limitations, these most unusual of primary documents can take their place alongside the likes of the Pastons, Mayhew, and the works of John Burnett, as exceptional windows into the lives of the ordinary Briton.