ITV's "70 Up" Concludes with Emotional Finale, Honoring Participant Nick Hitchon

The long-running ITV documentary series "70 Up" concluded Tuesday night with an emotional finale that left viewers in tears, notably featuring the final interview of participant Nick Hitchon, filmed just three days before his death.

Sixty-two years after the initial broadcast of "Seven Up!" in 1964, the program returned to catch up with its participants at the age of 70. The series was originally intended to conclude with "63 Up" in 2019, following the death of director Michael Apted. However, participant Nick Hitchon's terminal cancer diagnosis prompted filmmakers to revisit the project, with Academy Award-winning director Asif Kapadia taking the helm.

In 2023, Hitchon sent producer Claire Lewis an email that she interpreted as a coded message about his declining health. Despite "70 Up" not yet being commissioned, Lewis arranged for a camera crew to travel and film a final interview with the then 65-year-old Hitchon. He passed away three days after the recording.

Nick Hitchon's final interview was shown in full during the concluding episode. He had previously discussed his health in "63 Up," revealing his cancer diagnosis and its impact. "I lost 60 pounds in the last year, I am seriously ill. I have a cancer in my throat, and I don't know what the prognosis is, I don't know what's going to happen," he said at the time. "So I'm not really focused on the long-term future, I'm focused on fairly short-term futures at the moment."

In his final interview for "70 Up," Hitchon spoke about experiencing a stroke the previous autumn and the surprise of his doctors at his continued survival. He described himself as "exhausted" from hospital visits and expressed concern for his family having to manage without him. Despite his illness, he reflected on his life with a philosophy of "jumping in with both feet into things that were intimidating," a trait he attributed to his upbringing in the Yorkshire Dales and a process that the film series had aided.

He also shared how integral the documentary series had been to his life since he was six years old. "To me, this is tremendously important. In my life, there's always been another episode of this coming up. It's kind of exciting," he said, adding that he would likely feel a void when the filming concluded. "So I'll miss it, when [the camera crew] pack up and leave, and I'm fairly sure we're not going to do this again, I think I'll feel there's a hole in things that I haven't experienced since I was six."

Viewers on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) paid tribute to Hitchon, with many noting the poignant nature of the final episode and the series as a whole. Comments included praise for the series as "the greatest show in the history of TV," expressions of sadness for the participants, and admiration for Hitchon's courage and positivity.

Hitchon, the son of a Yorkshire farmer, studied at the University of Oxford before moving to the United States in the early 1980s to work as a nuclear fusion expert and university professor in Wisconsin. He married his university girlfriend, Jacqui, and they had a son before their divorce when he was 42. He had spoken in "63 Up" about the birth of his son being a moment of "pure, unadulterated joy."

His brother, Andrew, wrote in The Telegraph that Nick had been determined to participate in one final interview, suggesting it was his way of completing what he had started. He expressed hope that "70 Up" would provide closure for all participants and especially for Nick.