8 December, 2011 | By Catherine Neilan
The BBC is to explore the effects of the country’s ageing workforce in a constructed experiment documentary that follows 2010’s The Day The Immigrants Left and this year’s The Street That Cut Everything.
In the 2 x 60-minute The Town That Never Retired, an entire town will be populated with workers aged 70-75, who will be set tasks from manual labour to white collar roles. The show will attempt to understand the impact on the companies, their employees and the wider community.
Silver River will produce the double-header, which was ordered by BBC1 controller Danny Cohen and documentaries commissioner Charlotte Moore.
Moore said: “As we’re all likely to have to work into our 60s and 70s, this documentary explores what an ageing workforce means for us.
“We are focusing our experiment on one town, but we hope this will raise some important questions about how the changing face of the labour market will affect us all, young and old.”
Maxine Watson is the commissioning editor for the BBC and Daisy Goodwin is the executive producer for Silver River. Dan Goldsack, head of factual at Silver River, developed the idea.
The Town That Never Retired is set to air next spring/summer.
