Class of 62

You know when they talk about the ‘British documentary tradition’? This is what they mean. A 90-minute doc made by Marilyn Gaunt to the exacting standards set before the war by those irreproachable pioneers and then again in the TV era by the extraordinary generation of documentary makers that includes Ken Loach and Paul Watson and Roger Graef—and Gaunt herself. It’s as long as a feature-length movie and it’s slow (and this is the third of three films on the same subject made over 25 years).

It’s quite an odd experience watching the programme because it unfolds in such an unassuming way that it feels unconstructed or even arbitrary. It’s as if the whole thing was put together without much planning. But as you get to the end you’ll realise that this is an illusion produced by the absence of narrative artifice and production wizardry. It’s as carefully assembled as a Hollywood feature and the building emotional effect of this succession of simply-told stories is unarguable. It’s beautiful and moving.

Class of 62 is great TV but it’s undoubtedly a member of an endangered species. It’ll be a brave commissioner who buys such subtle stuff in preference to the much more accessible all-action factual TV that’s going out in or near primetime in the multi-channel world. Marilyn Gaunt says this will probably be her last film. I get the melancholy feeling it might be the last of its kind.