Six decades have passed since Jackie Bassett first appeared on TV aged seven, skipping down the road with her little sister.

It was 1964 and she had been selected by teachers at her east London primary school to appear in a documentary called 7 Up.

The show interviewed 14 seven-year-olds from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds. Inspired by the Jesuit saying: “Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man”, it was intended as a one-off – a snapshot of Britain’s class system and how it shapes us from a young age.

“They only picked me because I never stopped talking,” Jackie told the BBC, with an infectious giggle that hasn’t changed since childhood.

Little did she know then, but Jackie was being filmed for a show that would go on to be the longest-running documentary series ever made. In 2024, it was voted the most influential TV show of the past 50 years.

Now the curtain is falling, with the final instalment – 70 Up – airing on ITV this Tuesday.

“We didn’t really know what we were doing, we had no idea what was happening,” Jackie said of the day the Granada TV crew turned up at her school.

In the first episode, Jackie appeared alongside her friends, Lynn and Sue, as they were asked questions about boys at school and their hopes for the future. Jackie said she would like to marry a boy “that’s not got a lot of money, but has got some money”.

The nation was also introduced to the likes of wide-eyed Neil, who explained his plans to become either an astronaut or a coach driver; anxious Paul, who ruminated on the idea of one day marrying a woman who made him eat his greens; and pensive Bruce, who said his “heart’s desire is to see my daddy who is 6,000 miles away” in Rhodesia.

The first episode was directed by Canadian Paul Almond, with the help of a young researcher named Michael Apted, who was involved in selecting the children.

Apted then decided to follow up on the children seven years later.

“The material was dreadful – as teenagers, they wouldn’t say anything,” he later said of the second episode, 7 Plus Seven.

“Yet we started to realise the power of the idea; despite the film not being very good, everyone was interested in it.”

Apted went on to become a big name in Hollywood, directing blockbusters including James Bond’s The World Is Not Enough, but he always returned to the show and said it was his most significant achievement.

Every seven years, millions would tune in for updates on the cast’s lives. Neil’s dreamy outlook on the world as a child descended into battles with depression, isolation and homelessness, only to turn up as a Liberal Democrat councillor at 42 and then a lay preacher seven years later.

Jackie initially said she did not want children, but by 42 Up was an adoring mother to three boys.

As the series grew in popularity, Apted started receiving push-back from some of the participants, who felt they had been typecast based on their backgrounds.

At 21, Apted asked Jackie – who had recently got married – whether she had met “enough men” before she decided to marry. For the rest of the interview, she mostly looked to the floor while Sue and Lynn answered questions.

It took her 18 years to fully confront Apted over his questioning.

In 49 Up, she told him: “I was really angry… you wouldn’t have asked some of the other people in this program that question. You will edit this program as you see fit, I’ve got no control over that.”

Recalling the tense exchange, Jackie said she felt Apted could be out of touch, particularly over the changing roles of women in society.

“I think he still thought we were all in the kitchen, as I mentioned to him at 21. I just thought, ‘No, come on, it’s about time one of us called you out on it, because he never never asked us questions about politics. It was nearly always domestic,” she said.

Jackie was not the only cast member to clash with Apted.

John Brisby, who became a leading barrister, declared in 35 Up that the show felt like a “little pill of poison” injected into his veins every seven years and he wished his headmaster had never put him up for the show. He appeared in later series but refused to be interviewed by Apted.

And Charles Furneaux, who later worked at the BBC before becoming commissioning editor at Channel 4, refused to appear after 21 Up following an off-camera argument in which Apted later admitted he went “berserk”.

Apted acknowledged flaws with the show, saying it was a “horrible error” to have only four women in a cast of 14 when making the original selection.

Five years ago, Apted passed away, aged 79.

The effect he had on the cast is clear in the final episode.

Despite their differences, Jackie maintains deep affection and respect for the man she said “opened up a world to me that I would never have known”.

“I’ve always said it’s a bit like having an uncle in the family. Sometimes you love him and cuddle him to death, and other times you think: I wish he’d just go away.

“He would always, always help anybody and anything.”

Nick Hitchon died from cancer in 2023, becoming the second member of the cast to pass away after Lynn Johnson 10 years earlier.

Nick, who was born on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales and famously said he wanted to “find out about the moon and all that” in 7 Up, went on to become a scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin.

In his obituary, his brother Andrew wrote Nick “was an expert in nuclear fusion who eventually accepted that he would always be best known for appearing in a ground-breaking TV documentary rather than as a scientist”.

After Apted’s death, it was unclear whether 70 Up would happen.

But it was announced earlier this year that Asif Kapadia, best known for his documentaries on Amy Winehouse and Diego Maradona, would direct the final chapter.

Jackie said she felt apprehensive about having anyone other than Apted in charge, but said Kapadia made her feel immediately at ease. She even welcomed a new approach, saying his interviews felt more like a conversation, while Apted would often leave long, awkward pauses once she had finished her answer.

In the final episode, Jackie appears the most content she has been since the age of seven. She attributes this newfound peace to recently moving to Norfolk, from Scotland, where she had been since her thirties. She loves being a mother and grandmother, but said she “needed time for me”.

“I have that peace around me,” she said.

And does this episode really mark the end?

“I’m not sure any of us will have the energy for it, to be honest,” Jackie said. “I think this is the right time to stop, I really do.

“Seventy has got a symmetry to it,” she said. “We started at seven, we finished at 70 – and that’s it.”

Despite all the plaudits, Jackie has always been slightly perplexed as to why the show has made such an impact, but understands how watching their journeys has helped some people make sense of their own.

The series started out being about class but “then they suddenly thought, hang on a minute, this is about life”, she said.

“There’s somebody on that programme that just about everybody can associate with. And I think that is something that will outlast all of us.”