This week in movies you missed: Catch up with a British TV documentary series that has spanned almost a half century — and think about your own mortality.
What You Missed
In 1964, Granada Television ran a documentary profiling 14 British kids from various regions and social classes. The announcer intoned, “Why do we bring these children together? Because we want to get a glimpse of England in the year 2000. The shop steward and the executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old.”
Well, it’s 2013, and those “children” are nearing 60. Every seven years, the documentary crew (helmed since the second film by Michael Apted) has returned to check in on them, producing a one-of-a-kind record of how people evolve, or don’t, as they pass through their lives.
For instance, the viewers have watched Neil Hughes transformed from a lively, imaginative kid to a college drop-out to a homeless man to a local politician. His schoolmate, Peter Davies (pictured), followed a more consistent path as a schoolteacher and lawyer — but he also has a late-in-life musical career.
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