World In Action
Granada TV's hard-hitting current affairs series World in
Action was first transmitted in 1963 and has set a
consistently high standard in investigative journalism.
The first edition, in January, highlighted the atomic arms race
and showed Khrushchev and Kennedy
in conflict.
Later in the year, World in Action ran into trouble over
an exposé of the appalling living conditions of black people in
South Africa and Angola. The ambassadors of those countries
protested, and the ruling body of Independent Television, the ITA,
decided that the program was not impartial and decreed that the
authority should vet future editions.
The first producer was Australian Tim Hewat who, on arriving in
Switzerland to film a story about a typhoid outbreak at the height
of the winter tourist season, so incensed the normally
mild-mannered locals with the prospect of adverse publicity that
they pelted him with rocks.
World in Action continued to upset those in high places,
particularly with programs about Northern Ireland. Even a 1964
edition about the poor facilities available to British athletes
training for the Tokyo Olympics was banned; and when a film on defence
spending was vetoed in the 60s, part of it was broadcast instead
on the rival Panorama,
to the acute embarrassment of the ITA.
Probably the most famous product of The World In Action
is the 7 Up series of
documentaries with Michael Apted monitoring a dozen school
children every seven years; 7 Up in 1963, 14 Up in
1970, 21 Up in 1977, 28 Up in 1984, 35 Up in
1991 and 42 Up in 1998.
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