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Its reach exceeds its grasp, but what a concept to reach for. Truly distilling seven years of a life into a single couple‐hour documentary is obviously impossible, let alone seven years of fourteen lives, yet in trying it gets partway there, and later episodes get even more interesting by acknowledging the limitations. A phenomenal series.

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I don’t think it’s trying to distill life in the way you say. It’s the opposite. It’s impossibly thin slices of lives, the length of a conversation at a bus stop, which accrete meaning over the episodes.

You are constantly reminded of what you only know because of earlier episodes, and how much goes unsaid.

It’s something only empathy can make sense of and it challenges the viewer to empathize across time and culture.

The class resonances mean it’s a different experience when watched as a British person too.

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