The world you’ll often hear mentioned around discussions of ITV’s Up franchise is “experiment”. In broadcasting terms, it was certainly that – a project of unprecedented scope and patience, exploring the lives of 14 people from disparate class backgrounds at seven-year intervals, from childhood up until the age of 70. For the bulk of its run, the “experiment” was steered by documentarian Michael Apted, a researcher on the original Seven Up! who directed every entry from 7 Plus Seven (1970) through to 63 Up (2019). Since Apted’s death in 2021, directorial duties have passed to Asif Kapadia, the Oscar-winning director of profile documentaries Amy and Senna.

70 Up, the final entry in the series, finds the surviving participants mostly retired, in a mode of hyperopic reminiscence. Split over two feature-length episodes, it almost has the feel of a clip show; most of the documentary’s runtime is taken up with old archival footage, stitched together artfully by Kapadia and editors Andrew Hulme and Patrick Saxer. It’s a technique that amply conveys the impressive feat of a lifetime being documented – but also leaves 70 Up feeling somewhat inessential, like a catch up with an old friend with no real life updates to share. One participant, former nuclear scientist Nick Hitchon, died in 2023, but filmed an interview for the new programme shortly before his death. This interview, in which he speaks lucidly about his own ill health, is the best and most poignant part of the new special.

The thing is, outside of their bold conceptual innovation, the Up films were always a profoundly flawed “experiment” in the other sense of the word– their supposed function as a social experiment exploring class and its effects on life trajectories. The scope was too limited, the methodology too vague. The choice of participants betrays the prejudices of its era: the roster of participants is overwhelmingly white and comprised just four women (to 10 men).

While most of the contestants appeared to conform to the sort of lives for which they seemed predestined, others seemed to frustrate the hypothesis – most conspicuously Neil Hughes, who went from a happy, stable childhood, to a stretch of homelessness and mental illness in his 20s, and then a career in politics. His catch-up for this instalment finds him living in France, semi-content. (“I’m still quite lonely at times… but this is a common characteristic of our age,” he muses.)

Perhaps the biggest reason why 70 Up fails as an experiment – but makes such interesting, insightful television – was Apted himself, who refused to even attempt to be a passive observer. Throughout 70 Up, the series’ participants wrestle with Apted’s authorship of the series. Many of them argue that he came in with an agenda, with preconceptions about issues relating to class. One participant notes that Apted had “cast everyone” from the off – “and didn’t they know it, in some cases”. John Brisby, a child of elite private education turned high-ranking barrister, argues in an interview that “we live in a classless society nowadays”, and criticises Apted’s editorialising influence. (Misrepresented or not, John came across as a cartoonish Richie Rich-type as a child, claiming as a 14-year-old that he wanted to eradicate unions.)

Apted was himself a key character, and would sometimes spar with the participants, both on camera and off. At several points, various subjects declined to appear for particular installments; this is the first entry since 21 Up in 1977 to feature all living participants in some capacity. Kapadia, wisely, takes a different approach, guiding the proceedings with a more invisible hand. (He is not heard asking questions, for instance.) There is something lost in Apted’s absence, a particular rapport between interviewer and subject that comes from a lifetime of familiarity. Much of the new interview footage feels inevitably less personal – though the subjects are still forthcoming, and it’s clear towards the end that wrapping up the series was an emotional process for all involved.

Did the Up franchise prove what it set out to prove about class and upbringing? If you were handed a seven-year-old child, could you indeed prod them a bit, look them up and down, and know what the future has in store? Life is ultimately too messy for such things; it resists easy conclusions. In this sense, 70 Up is authentic to the lives it depicts. Taken as part of the six-decade-long whole, it is an invaluable work of art about the human experience – the universal and the specific, here one and the same.

‘70 Up’ is available to watch now on ITVX