Asif Kapadia will “bring the long-running ITV documentary series Up to an end with a concluding instalment that will air this year,” so says The Guardian.
“The series, which began in 1964 and was voted the most influential UK TV show of the last 50 years in 2024, has followed a group of people from childhood to adulthood at seven-year intervals and now checks in on them as they approach old age.”
I wrote a bit about Apted on his passing, and after watching what I thought would be the last installment:
Each film is relatively simplistic in structure, short interviews with each subject cut with footage of what they’ve been up to recently. But with each new installment, we see entire lives unfolding. Their lives force us to examine our own. It seems impossible not to watch the Up Series and not think about where you were when you were 7 and 21 and 28, or where you think you will be, or who you want to be, in seven years, in fourteen years, in thirty-five years.
And with the passing of Apted, if you will be.
Profound words: “I want my life to have meant something.”