“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man”. This Jesuit maxim, together with the belief that one’s background predetermines one's future, was the inspiration behind arguably the first reality TV program, “7-up”. It began when “World in Action” interviewed a group of seven year old school children from different socio-economic classes during Thatcher’s Britain, and then followed them every seven years charting their life. “49-up” is the latest release in the seven part series.

In every way it is a fascinating and enthralling instalment that smoothly chronicles the evolution of each seedling of a child into the oak or withered gum that stands at 49 years. Aside from its lessons in societal privilege and divide, it yields a unique insight into the human narrative, in which each of us is too busy writing to contemplate its ending, let alone reflect on the finished work. Here the viewer is offered a transient glimpse from the margins into this smooth transition from the bright eyed faces of 1964, through adolescence and young adulthood, to parenthood and the lined faces of 2005.

We see in this that the drama that animates most lives is not about politics or governments, but rather it is about marriages that work or fail, ambitions that thrive or flounder, children who are born or sadly missed. It is life as only can be seen on from the side lines. From this both a sense of sadness and beauty emerge as people who entered their forties looking young and ambitious emerge from them old and accepting of who they are.

It is a worthwhile film that assists each of us in better understanding ourselves as well as humankind.