Michael Apted, who has died aged 79, was a British movie director who – like Ken Loach and Ken Russell – earned his stripes working on TV. But it was his destiny to help create an epic ongoing masterpiece for the small screen with truly cinematic scope and beyond: current-affairs television which had the scale of cinema, combined with the Mass Observation Project and the Roman census.
Granada Television’s Seven Up! from 1964, was, to quote a comedy of the era, not so much a programme, more a way of life. It took 14 British children at the Jesuit age of seven (that is, the age at which the Jesuits’ St Ignatius of Loyola famously said he could “show you the man” if schooled early enough) and interviewed them about their lives and opinions – seven from a working-class background and seven from a posher caste. Then it was updated every seven years, finally spanning 56 years.
Seven Up! was directed by Paul Almond, with Apted working as a researcher; Apted went to direct all the subsequent series and came to define this utterly gripping and moving thought experiment in class, history and identity; high-mindedly conceived before reality TV, and also, perhaps, before the media and public might not so easily accept such a grand liberal-paternalistic perspective. It had an incalculable effect on British social realist cinema from the early 1960s to the present day – as well as the thinking of the British progressive left – as it asked us to ruminate on the inescapability or otherwise of class, and what narratives were possible for working people.
It was also the key influence on one of the greatest American movies of the 21st century: Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014), showing the coming-of-age of a young man in a kind of movie time-lapse, filmed over 12 years. And in the noughties it became impossible to watch Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint growing up before our eyes in the Harry Potter movies without thinking of Michael Apted’s magnificently daring creation.
Apted was far from being a sobersided social-issue preacher of course: he directed the glorious Jack Rosenthal TV comedy P’Tang Yang Kipperbang in 1982 (that too was a kind of growing-pains drama). On the big screen he was also to direct a Bond movie: The World Is Not Enough in 1999, and his last movie, in 2017, was the entertaining action thriller Unlocked, with Noomi Rapace and John Malkovich.
It was Hollywood which gave Apted his biggest career break, and the chance to direct a hugely admired feature film which combined his social concerns with his sure commercial filmic touch. His Oscar-winning Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), written by Tom Rickman, was a biopic of country singing star Loretta Lynn (played by Sissy Spacek), the miner’s daughter from the mountain country of Kentucky who rose to showbiz greatness. Here too Apted showed a sinewy sense of class and background – though it was America, not Britain, which enabled him to create a movie which showed someone breaking free of it all.
Apted also had a sure touch for prestigious, award-winning cinema: Gorillas in the Mist (1988), about naturalist Dian Fossey, and Class Action (1991) about a legal battle against the makers of a defective automobile, both demonstrated his connection with ideas and ideals, and the technique with which he made them work on screen within the conventional studio system. And of course he could handle with terrific élan the straightforward thriller – such as Enigma (2001), his Bletchley Park drama adapted by Tom Stoppard from the Robert Harris novel.
Like the children in his unforgettable TV masterpiece, Apted grew up and grew away – but maybe not so very far, and his movies always showed how class, family and country shaped who we are.