The Up Series

This weekend, my roommates and I started watching the Up Series. It's a series of documentary films following a group of British children as they grow up. They were selected at the age of seven from schools all over England, attempting to get a representative sample from all social classes, and every seven years, the students are interviewed again. The original director believed that the social classes in England were so strict, that they would effectively determine the type of people each of the children would grow up to be.

I've seen "Seven Up!," "Seven Plus Seven," and "Twenty-One Up" so far, and I've found them all fascinating. The last installment of the series was in 2005 when the group turned 49, and a new installment is expected in 2011 or 2012.

The whole series is on Netflix, and many of them are available for instant viewing on your PC.