aspiration: ambitie, verlangen.

current: lopend.

deluge: zondvloed.

gem: juweeltje.

heart-rending: hartverscheurend.

misnomer: verkeerde benaming.

Muhammad Ali/George Foreman: Amerikaanse boksers die in 1974 in het toenmalige Zaïre (Congo) tegen elkaar uitkwamen voor de wereldtitel bij de zwaargewichten.

reflex: afgeleide.

rumble: gevecht.

tedious: vervelend.

Mass television programming is now more than half a century old. This means that TV channels have large and ever-expanding larger archives at their disposal. One reflex of this phenomenon is the series running on Britain’s Channel 4 based entirely around various lists: the top 100 comedy shows, the 20 favourite soaps, the 100 best ever music videos, the top 20 sporting moments on TV, and so on and so on. And so on. The apparently endless productivity of this recycling format has led to jokes about the Top 50 ‘Greatest Ever’ Lists. Most of the time, these programmes are alternately tedious or extremely irritating (because no sooner have you got interested in watching the current item than the camera cuts to someone talking about it or they move swiftly on to the next item on the list).

Occasionally, however, the format can produce a gem. Such was the case with the 50 Greatest Documentaries, shown a few weeks ago. Based on the judgements of 400 documentary film makers, it was an encouraging reminder that, despite the recent deluge of pseudo-documentaries which go by the misnomer ‘reality television’, Britain can still do really good television.

Among the top ten were David Attenborough’s monumental natural history series, Life on Earth, the heart-rending, first-person story of a man with a rare fatal disease ( The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off) and the film of the famous ‘rumble in the jungle’ between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman ( When We Were Kings). But the ‘winner’ was a series of films which is almost as old as TV itself. Intended as a ‘one-off’ to show the divisions in social class which existed in 1950s Britain, Seven Up showed the lives of 20 seven-year-olds of different backgrounds and consisted mostly of them talking to camera about their aspirations. It captured the public imagination, so seven years later, the children were revisited for a second programme. This too was rated a success. Although some of the original 20 have now declined to take part, 49Up was recently shown and the intention is to keep the programme going indefinitely (presumably till they all die).