Conflict management

7 Up, the TV series first made in 1964, would never have worked on radio. Ten young boys and (only) four girls were interviewed as they set out on their lives, with the intention of checking up on them every seven years thereafter to see what might have happened to them. They’ve now reached 56 and the series instead of looking forward to what these children might become is looking back over where they have been. The sad, guarded eyes of the young boy in a care home in 1964 made a powerful impact in black and white (colour had not yet arrived on TV), as did the sparky smile of another boy. Words alone somehow would not have had the same impact. We needed to see their faces, and those expressions, foretelling, we could have imagined, what would happen to them.

Quite the reverse is true of a Radio 4 documentary, The Trouble with Kane (produced by Sue Mitchell). It owes much to the fly-on-the-wall techniques pioneered by the 7 Up team, but it would never have worked as a TV programme. There would have been a suspicion of contrivance, a sense that the rows were being manufactured. We would not have felt quite so intimately involved with the deadlock faced by Kane and his family, nor been made to feel so aware that this could happen to any family with children.

Kane is in trouble with his Bangladeshi parents for skiving off school and smoking cannabis. They’re terrified of his rages, his swearing, his absolute refusal to conform, to respect, to stay within the boundaries of home or school. He’s only 12.