TV REVIEW : Growing Up in America

The only honest way to judge the success of the CBS/Granada Television project that begins with “Age Seven in America” (at 9 tonight, Channels 2 and 8) will be to see how it tracks the 19 American kids introduced here over ensuing years.

The plan is for director Phil Joanou to revisit the group every seven years. Whether it matches the depth of the British project that inspired it--Michael Apted’s five-part-and-counting series for Granada on a group of youths born in 1956 (with “35 Up” the most recent installment)--remains, like the kids themselves, to be seen.

But despite Apted’s involvement as producer, “Age Seven” adopts an entirely different strategy from Granada’s initial film, “7 Up.” Rather than devote distinct and separate passages to each child, Joanou quickly introduces each, then cuts between them to compare and contrast their feelings about life, fantasies, God, race relations, love, play and the future.

Ironically, while Apted adopted a typically individualistic American approach, his American counterpart takes a more social, connect-the-dots overview of children today.

Different methods, different results.

A disturbingly similar theme emerges, though, that makes “Age Seven” more valuable than merely a record of children in the ‘90s. Although Meryl Streep doesn’t stress it in her fine narration, in both films, the 7-year-olds are born into a stark class system. Almost everything these kids think or wish for is partially based on their situations. So for Salvadoran immigrant Julio, a difference between his native and adopted countries is the size of guns people kill themselves with, while suburban pals Eric and Brandon don’t really know what gangs are.

These contrasts do tend to squeeze out the vast middle, where most kids still live. But where they come together is with an already developed sense of charity for others, and of morality. When Joanou films again in seven years, it will be fascinating to see if Edie, a black girl in rural Georgia, will still distinguish between people by their goodness and evil, and not by the color of their skin.

Time will tell.