Would this Beatles tv show work?

I'm the same way with that series and it's not just music dates but film and sports too. I think they get away with it by starting each episode by saying it was nineteen eighty something as to tell us a story based on memories where we get our facts mixed up. I too am an 80s kid an teen and it drives me nuts. Having a Def Leppard poster on the wall and that photo being from the Hysteria era of 87/88 and talking about a movie they're going to see from 82 is annoying. I even caught them mention a 2 point conversion in relation to an 80s NFL football game when that wasn't part of the NFL until 1994, although that was more of an error than deliberate.

 

Remember this? Aired November 23, 1979 on ABC TV and produced by Dick Clark Productions:

 

As long as these things happen:
1. The actors are competent (as with Nowhere Boy) they don't have to look like them or sound like them, just be good actors. I hate when people try to mimic John because no one ever does it right. They're just nasally and annoying.
2. Original Beatles music recordings are used. No covers, whether they're done by the actors or whatever.
3. It doesn't focus so much on the early days. I get why so many documentaries and dramas do, but there's so very little about the post-Help! days in comparison.
4. Don't make a mockery of the later '60s psychedelic stuff like so many things do. Not that I usually care, but if it's going to be about The Beatles, I want them to take it seriously, just as the band did. Psychedelia and 'flower-power' was more than crazy clothes and 'tripping balls'.
5. Focus on the creation of the MUSIC. Especially when we get to Rubber Soul and on days. The music is why we hold them so close to our hearts, so make that the centrepiece of the series. Not just the relationships like almost every documentary/drama I've seen of them.
6. Don't make a big deal out of Epstein's homosexuality, or worse yet, Lennon's apparent ties to it. It's entirely irrelevant to The Beatles story and it doesn't need to be hammered in for the sake of forced drama or inclusion.

 

That’s the main problem. Getting the rights to those songs is so exceptionally expensive that it probably puts people off from doing a film about anything other than the pre-fame days.

The Nowhere Boy actors were mostly terrific, though the kid they got to play George didn’t do his accent particularly well. I’m American, so I don’t know if it would be difficult to find someone who sounds like him. I thought the kids playing John and Paul did a pretty good job.

 

Yeah, it's a lot to ask.
The only way it'd happen is if Apple themselves made this docu-drama.

 

...and they won't.

 

Have Larry David cast it...and cast Lewisohn with somebody irritating, like Hugh Laurie, or Rowan Atkinson - no, wait...Ricky Gervais! Ohhh, I am so all over this...!

 

Outside of the inaccuracies great movie.

 

I agree. I guess the same can be said for Nowhere Boy too though. Anybody who thinks that movie was the solid truth is greatly mistaken:

Nowhere Boy (2009) - Goofs - IMDb

 

I always thought the guy from Birth Of The Beatles did a good job. He doesn't really oversell it.

 

It’s not of course, but it’s the only one where I haven’t found it cringeworthy. I know a lot of people like Backbeat, but I don’t think the actors look or sound anything like them. Plus they’re way too old. At least they got actual kids to play them in Nowhere Boy.

 

These are really minor errors.

Oh, cool. I'll have to check it out. Thought I'd seen it before because I recognised the name, but the first few minutes of that link don't seem familiar at all.

 

Yeah, I haven’t seen that one either. I looked at it quickly and at least I can tell who’s supposed to be which person.

 

Minor errors? They completely made up that bit about John attacking Paul at Julia's funeral. That never happened!

 

Two options I see working:

1) Streaming drama series, approached as a very accurate period piece. Could be pretty good if it’s cast properly.

2) Network sit-com. Really ham them up, laugh track and everything. Obviously they all live together in the standard sit-com house that has the staircase in the background of the living room, with a door to the kitchen, etc. I’d watch it.

 

The entire movie is on YouTube and the Paul and Ringo guys are great too not just John. George is so so.

 

Putting aside the big problem getting the music rights (as highlighted above), I think there will be too many "creative" liberties taken with the story lines and characters to be a respectful portrayal. Yes, stories do need to be modified and characters condensed to fit time constraints, but sometimes this goes far beyond appropriateness (eg. non-factual storyline of Etta James and Marshall Chess having a relationship in Cadillac Ranch). And another huge barrier - the two primary gatekeepers in this project both have a track record of re-writing history and not agreeing (McCartney and Ono).

 

Ooh, seeing how hung up things are getting on the music rights, here’s a perhaps radical idea:

Just do it entirely without music. I mean, we know the music already, right? Just depict the stuff that is not them playing music.

 

I think the history is public domain at this point, right? Leave McCartney and Ono out of the process.

 

That's easily the biggest thing there. It was a brief moment where he said sorry right after. Still shouldn't have been included, but it's still minor ultimately.

 

Early stuff could be like Backbeat. That was a good one!

 

This type of TV series was done years ago, about the early years of Elvis. It was a half-hour drama that was cancelled after a few episodes.

Elvis (1990 TV series) - Wikipedia

 

It could work if they made it animated and kept a sense of humour. It would be difficult to get actors who both look and sound like The Beatles, so animating it would be easier, and they'd be able to do more to capture the vibe. Think about Klaus's artwork and how much we associate it with what those Hamburg days were like.

With that in mind, these are a few ideas:

1. A mini-series with each episode covering different eras up to the break-up.
2. An on-going series where each season is a year in their lives, and each episode alternates between focusing on a different Beatle.
3. Something done totally in fun where they just animate little vignettes of bizarre/funny Beatles stories which you'd never see in a biopic.

More than anything I'd want something like this to not take The Beatles too seriously. That's what would make it successful. Not in a clown-y way, but in order to humanise them and show people what vibrant personalities they had.

 

A rumor of a new animated Beatles TV feature film was circulating in 2015
Animated Beatles feature planned – The Daily Beatle

A film will be dealing with The Beatles likeness, and I'm sure the legals in Apple have copyright controls over their likeness, and Yoko gets to sign-off anything Lennon-related (as does Olivia for Harrison). The above link supports that licencing is required for Beatles likeness "the Beatles’ likenesses in the cartoon series have been licensed off by Apple Corps Ltd for use on commercial products."

 

There's certainly plenty of mythology to draw upon here. Somehow, I rarely find these kinds music bio films to be satisfying. Too often, they sacrifice the more nuanced truth in favor of amping up the drama.