Boffins of the 1970s predict the Britain of the 2000s. Were they right? Watch and find out…

What can be more intriguing than seeing the recent past as imagined from the further past, when it was then the near-ish future. Got it? Well that’s what to expect from this film, in which 1977 boffins are asked what they think will be the key features, opportunities and challenges of Britain twenty-three years later, in the year 2000. Inevitably, some speculations are amusingly off-beam: flying-saucer style houses and super-dangerous looking conveyor-belt pavements! But what’s notable is how material their visions are: the emergence of the digital world seems quite beyond their ken. Who can blame them for not easily forseeing this, and the issues they do focus on – food, housing, transport – remain the fundamental ones for human societies, and as complex and painful as ever.

The archived copy ends abruptly, before the programme itself ends – for doubtless mundane reasons but as if on a note of suspense. This is an episode of an educational series for secondary school pupils called Just Look!, which was produced, over several years, by Yorkshire TV for televising to schools nationally through the ITV network. Remember when viewing that this is content aimed at young people, roughly, 14 to 16 year olds: at the time studying for O-Levels or CSEs, who’d be hitting their late thirties by the time the millennium hit.