It focused on heart surgeon Michael Ellis DeBakey at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas.
In 1966, a programme called "Lift up Your Skirt", introduced by Malcolm Muggeridge, explored the Playboy club scene.
In 1967, the series issued a two-part special report called "Consenting Adults" on the issue of male and female homosexuality, the opinion of society towards gay men and lesbians and possible decriminalisation of male homosexual acts along the lines of the Wolfenden report.
"The Fallen Idols" looked those who had been to the top and back, two of its subjects being Bill Maynard and Anthony Steel.
Although it featured, among others, eleven-year-old Ricky Wilde (son of Marty Wilde), the programme primarily concerned itself with the ill-fated eleven-year-old Darren Burn, an ex-Christ Church Senior Chorister from Southgate in north London and the son of EMI executive Colin Burn.
EMI spent a lot of money promoting him and although his initial record releases in 1973 were produced by Eric Woolfson, his record career failed to take off; his first single, "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart", backed with "True Love Ways" (EMI 2040) reached number 60 in the charts.
"), Burn, then aged 26, referring to his ill-fated launch in 1973, told John Pitman that it had been "a very strange thing for a young child to go through" and that it had left him "with a feeling of failure".
In October 1979, Man Alive covered the contraction of the Triumph motorcycles factory at Meriden with many original members of the workers' co-operative being made redundant.
Their leaving enabled Triumph to survive a further 4 years although, as shown on the programme, there was much bitterness and regret surrounding their departure, particularly as many participated in the original sit-in that stopped the new owners, NVT, closing Meriden down.
Looking at loneliness through a range of candid interviewees, including a widower who was desperate not to burden anyone else but could find no solace in his life since the death of his wife, a man who had found himself gradually losing touch with his family, and a girl who dwelt at busy railway stations to feel a sense of company.
Although it held its own for a while the strand was eventually replaced by 40 Minutes, which returned to the all-film format but without presenter or reporter, thus marking a turn towards the so-called fly-on-the-wall documentary.