Story about the March family of four daughters and a strong mother who, because her husband is away serving in the Army during the Civil War, must raise her "little women" on her own. The daughters include: spirited Jo who longs for a career as a writer; beautiful and conservative older sister Meg; fragile Beth; and the romantic Amy. Through the years, as they become women, the sisters share their most cherished and painful moments of self-discovery...

Inspired by the Jesuit saying, "Give me a child until he is 7 years old, and I will give you the man," in 1964 Granada Television commissioned a short documentary wherein producers profiled 14 7-year-old children, and loosely speculated on what sort of lives they might lead. It was meant and received as an indictment of the British class system, which seemed most inflexible in 1964. Almost as an afterthought, director Michael Apted--a researcher on...