Back to the Future: The Up Series

The final word in 56 Up—the latest installment in director Michael Apted's longrunning documentary series that follows the lives of a group of Britons—belongs to Tony. A gamesome cab driver and former trainee jockey, Tony operates as a stand-in for "new Britain," with a holiday home in Spain, a rowdy bonhomie, and an up-by-the-bootstraps biography in keeping with the optimism of East London's much-touted "regeneration." With the air of a practiced showman, he takes the viewer to the places that were important to him as a child growing up in London's East End forty-nine years before.