Counter Culture

Disney + TV series review.

Introduction

The initial release of the Anthology albums and the eight-part television series shown on ITV were big events in 1995/6, even if the viewing figures for the latter steadily declined as the series progressed.

The showing of the final episode on New Year’s Eve when any Brit’ worthy of the name was down the pub or at a party was as inexplicable as the decision to release the new single Free as a Bird after most of us had already bought it on the Anthology One album, a decision that deprived them of their first number one single in a quarter of a century.

But the enterprise was still a big event, and one that, for a time, united both casual and hardcore fans. Before Anthology, the best television rendering of the Beatles journey we’d had was The Complete Beatles. That was good for its time, but here, finally were the three surviving  Beatles telling their story in their own words, together with archive footage and audio of John, as well as important contributions from significant others such as their Producer George Martin, and manager Brian Epstein, who sadly, like John, had to participate from beyond the grave, and former road manager and then Apple boss Neil Aspinall.

Through working on John demos donated by Yoko, and with a little help from Jeff Lynne and the, then, wonders of modern technology, the ‘boys’ provided us with new material in the form of the two singles, the aforementioned Free As A Bird and Real Love.

The third song they commenced work on, Now and Then, had to wait until 2023 to get its moment in the sun, and you can read my detailed review here The Last Beatles Song | Counter Culture

It was a project that had been long in the making. Aspinall had produced a rough ninety-minute first draft as far back as 1970, provisionally to be called The Long and Winding Road. Ringo’s comment at the time was that ‘It’s mostly us getting in and out of cars, and on and off planes.’

As they had only just broken up, and were wracked with business and personal differences, it was all way too soon, anyway.

But it was idea which would resurface periodically over the years. John even referred to it, still calling it The Long and Winding Road, though, in reality, neither he nor George was ever going to allow to be called after what was essentially a Paul solo composition, during his final round of interviews to publicise his and Yoko’s Double Fantasy album shortly before his tragic murder in December 1980.

Their interest in the project likely rose and fell in direct collation to the state of these differences.

George, conversely the ‘money Beatle’ as well as the ‘Spiritual Beatle,’ was finally driven to to commit to completing this unfinished business by financial concerns, following the collapse of his initially successful Handmade Films production company (Life of Brian, The Long Good Friday, Whitnall and I – not a bad resume), and some shoddy business management.

Conversely George, as well as being the ‘Spiritual Beatle’ was also the ‘Money Beatle’, just as he was, at various times, both the most and the least willing of the four to entertain the idea of a reunion.

On a personal level, my memory is of being drastically late for work through waiting for Chris Evans to play Free as a Bid, as he promised to do every five minutes or so on his Breakfast Show a day or two before its release. This was not quite the first ever radio play. That distinction had belonged to Anne Nightingale a few hours earlier, in the Radio Two ‘graveyard slot,’ but not even I was that dedicated. Or maybe I simply didn’t know that Annie would be playing it.

So, there I was, waiting for Chris to get on with it as the clock ticked ever closer to the start of my 10-8 shift.

In the end, I didn’t even bother to make up an excuse. My colleagues knew me well enough to forgive and forget.

First impressions? To be honest, I think I had an exaggerated idea of what could be done with a two-track mono tape recorded with the cassette player on top of the piano, even with a great producer like Jeff Lynne, and, presumably, the most cutting-edge technology then available to anyone, anywhere. Those ghostly John Lennon vocals took some getting used, though I came to love it, in time. The moment when George’s half-verse gives way to his cracker of a slide guitar solo is right up there as a truly great Beatles moment.

So, of course, I bought the CDs, and watched the series, and loved it, even if, as I’ve heard many fans comment, I thought the earlier episodes were better than the latter. This was largely, because, save for the ‘rooftop gig’ of January 1969, miming to Hey Jude and Revolution on the David Frost show a year earlier, and to All You Need Is Love at the worldwide One World TV broadcast a year before that, there is no live Beatles footage after the summer of ’66, and, it seemed, aside from that which became first Let It Be and then Get Back, a dearth of in-studio rehearsal and recording material.

The result of this, was a lot more talking heads in the latter episodes, and that can get wearing, even if the heads doing most of the talking are mostly the Beatles.

Still, the series was great, and when the DVD version finally came out, it came with a whole two and-a-half-hours’ worth of Extras material.

But we Beatles fans are never fully satisfied; and why should we be? So, as soon as Blu Rays became a thing, the clamour for a visual and audio upgrade began.

In addition, the release of the superb Super de Lux versions of the latter Beatles albums, Revolver to Let It Be, had shown that George Martin’s comment at the time of the original Anthology albums, to the effect that ‘That’s it, now. If we put anything else out it would have to be called ‘Scraping the Bottom of the Barrell’ because there’s nothing left in the can’, was plain wrong. Those albums had revealed that much better alternative takes of songs, or even previously unheard tracks, existed in the vaults of Abbey Road than were released on the original three-volume Anthology album.

Then, there was the little matter of Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back, which was released, again on Disney, in November 2022. The way that Jackson had taken Michael-Lyndsey-Hogg’s eighty minutes of grainy, narratively direction-less Let It Be, and made of it almost eight-hours of high-definition, sonically superb compelling drama (at least for us obsessives. Get Back is not really one for the normies) had raised the bar still higher by showing what could now be done.

My Get Back review can be read here A Month in the Life: Peter Jackson’s The Beatles Get Back reviewed | Counter Culture

So, here we are. We finally have our long-awaited Anthology upgrade. Maybe not on Blu Ray (another point I’ll return to shortly), but with Jackson again at the helm, with the sonic aspects handled by Giles Martin, whose work on those expanded album collections has been generally excellent (it must be in the genes), apart from the occasional misfire like his sacrilegious butchering of I Am the Walrus on the recent ‘Blue’ (1967-70) remix, there seemed very little that could go wrong.

So, did it?

 Positives

The short answer, is no. It’s pretty much positives all the way, for me.

Anthology 2025 is a vast improvement on the original visually. That had been made to be seen on the small cathode televisions of the time, and, watching recently the first four episodes from my DVD Box-set, it shows. The new version is very clearly made to be seen on the much bigger, digital HD screens now present in most of our homes.

Sonically, it’s also massively improved. I don’t possess a 5.1 surround system, but those who do, report that it sounds amazing.

There’s also a lot more John. Of course, he’s the only Beatle who didn’t live to take part in the project personally, but there are more audio and visual clips included than previously, so there’s more of a sense of him being involved. Obviously, a lot of care and attention has been taken in the selection of these clips, presumably at the urging of son Sean, who for the first time is listed among the producers of the series, alongside Paul, Ringo and George’s widow Olivia, rather than the now ailing ninety-three-year-old Yoko.

One disappointment among fans was when we learned, shortly before release, that we were getting an upgrade of the TV series rather than the extended DVD release.

But more is not always better, and I think that the series is much better paced than the old physical release version, where, based on my recent viewing of episodes 1-4, there was a lot of unnecessary repetition and padding. That makes it a better jumping-on point for those who are only now in the process of discovering the Beatles.

For someone like me, born in the same year as the release of Love Me Do, their first proper single, it’s hard to believe that such people exist, but they do.

And the series is still substantial enough to satisfy (more or less) us old obsessives.

It’s not a straight upgrade of what we saw on our TV screens either, and that’s another big positive.

As I’ve said, my own view of the 1995 series was that the earlier episodes were better than the latter, which was no doubt a contributory factor to those declining viewing figures. Now, my opinion has changed, with a definite preference for the latter episodes.

Leaving aside the new episode nine, which I’ll mention shortly, there is a lot more footage of Paul, George and Ringo being interviewed together while making the project than was previously the case, and that helps to fill out the latter episodes, and in a way that is interesting and enlightening.

As Ringo says at one point, ‘My Anthology would be different to Paul’s, Geoge and John’s would be different…’ I’m paraphrasing, but his basic point is that there can be no single ‘true’ story of the Beatles, and what was presented as their official history in 1995, and now, was always going to be the result of compromise between the main protagonists, which is one reason that the original took around four years to make, even once the decision to go ahead had been made.

We’ve long known that there were tensions present at those 1990s meet-ups and recording sessions, especially between Paul and George. But all three were at least self-aware enough, and accommodating enough to one another to acknowledge that there could be no single ‘correct’ version of the story, and this enabled them to move forward and get the job done as honestly as was possible.

Without watching the original 1995 series, the extended DVD cut, and the new version back-to-back, it’s impossible for me to be able to recount every change that has been made, though no doubt more than one super-fan will be painstakingly undertaking this task. But, from memory, definite changes include the appearance of John’s verse-demo for Yellow Submarine, a demo we didn’t know existed until the 2022 Revolver Super de Lux edition (previously, this had been thought to be primarily a Paul song), the replacement of Lindsey-Hogg’s Let It Be footage with clips from Jackson’s Get Back.

I also remember a Paul interview way back when he said that George’s modesty had led to the omission of a whole section on his own development as a songwriter. This is now present and correct, and the series is all the better for it.

On then to that new episode nine. What we all wanted was lots of footage of the ‘Threetless’ working on Free As A Bird, Real Love and Now and Then, interacting together in and out of the studio, discussing the making of the series itself, more of them jamming together acoustically inside George’s modest home, and passing around the ukulele while playing and reminiscing about India in his equally modest garden.

And we get all that. Not enough, of course, especially of the development of new material from John’s mono-cassette demos. But, actually more than I expected. None of this footage has ever been seen anywhere, not on the DVD Extras disc, nor even in the darkest depths of YouTube.

We do get a little more of the indoor acoustic jam, and Aint She Sweet, sung originally by John on the ‘B’ Side of My Bonnie, the record that originally bought their existence to the attention of Mr. Epstein, has been added to the outdoor uke’ session, as has Jimmy Reed’s Baby What Do You Want Me To Do?

Amongst the newly added interviews with the three of them together that have been included for the first time, they address the question of whether the series could have been made in, say, 1975, with a resolute ‘No’ from all three. Too many business problems and personal issues existed. As late as 1988, Paul refused to join George, Ringo and Yoko in being present to accept the band’s admission to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. John’s physical absence aside, the time was right in 1995.

The knowledge that George would die a mere six years after the completion of the series is a reminder of how important it is that they got together to do it when they did.

That their assertion that their issues were now behind them and they were now the best of friends, wasn’t strictly true, because the relationship between Paul and George remained complex, is unimportant when we know that both Paul and Ringo took the opportunity to say goodbye, separately, at George’s bedside shortly before his death in 2001, and at a property secretly owned by Paul, and made available to George so that he might spend his final weeks with his family away from possible press intrusion.

That John and George’s relationship soured after 1974, and that they never did quite resolve their differences, is also unimportant. The other three clearly loved and missed him, and, although we only get to see what they wanted us to see, those that remained were at least close enough to get the series made, and even to record together again.

There is something very special about seeing Paul and George harmonising together at the mic with the ghost of John singing lead in their headphones. As up and down as their personal relationship might have been over the years, their voices blended together as perfectly in their fifties as they had in their twenties.

And, in essence, through all the insanity they shared, the good and the bad, they remained those same kids who talked guitars and Elvis on the ‘86’ bus to school.

Ringo, of course, is always just Ringo, the perfect drummer for the Beatles, and often the glue that held three giant egos together.

‘I’ve loved hanging out with you guys, again’ he says in George’s garden, and you can tell he meant it. 

Each episode concludes, before the main credits roll, with the words ‘In Loving Memory of John and George.’ This was a nice touch. I’ve so far watched the whole series through once, and Episode Nine twice. It’s more than worthy of another monthly £5.99 subscription to Disney+.

Negatives

My biggest criticism concerns the Beatles ongoing relationship with Disney. How much more impactful could the series have been had it been free-to-air on mainstream TV, as it was in 1995?

This is made all the worse by Disney’s aversion to physical media releases. A fan-led campaign, orchestrated in large part by Peter Jckson himself, pushed them to make an exception for Get Back, though even then we got only a bare-bones repeat of the Disney stream, with no Extras, let alone the fourteen-hour cut Jackson insists he has ready to go (I believe Star Wars fans forced a similar concession for The Mandalorian). But I don’t think we’ll be so lucky with the Anthology. After all, we’ve had no physical release of the cleaned-up version of Let It Be, or of the Beatles ’64 and Eight Day’s a Week both recent(ish) additions to the growing Beatles-Disney canon.

There will always be a place in this world, contrary to what some believe, for real, physical items you can hold in your hands and put on your shelves, and when it comes to a phenomenon as culturally important as the Beatles, it should be seen as of the utmost importance that physical versions of all of their material, visual and audio, are permanently available and able to be revisited without having to maintain a lifelong subscription to Disney, Spotify or any other corporate conglomerate.

Some have commented that the AI techniques used to upgrade picture quality have at times led to the Beatles themselves taking on an air of visual unreality, overly pasty on the black and white, and almost cartoonish in some of the colour footage. This latter criticism was also made regarding Get Back. I don’t really see that myself. Maybe on the black and white footage, but what we lose in terms of ‘authenticity’ is more than offset by the increase in clarity. For instance, the famous Some Other Guy footage shot at the Cavern shortly after Ringo replaced Pete, has never looked better.

Incidentally, the latest Doctor Who Collection set, Series 13, Tom Baker’s second, looks bloody awful. I bought Series 12, and that looks great, but someone has got badly carried away with the ‘AI enhancements’ with this latest release.  Fortunately, Anthology has got it about right.

The Albums

This is primarily a review of the television series but, as in 1995, Anthology 2025 is a multi-media enterprise, with the original albums, 1-3, having been remastered, and a new Anthology 4 added, released on both vinyl, CD and available to stream. So, I suppose I should say a little about these too, though my listening experience has so far been limited to the tracks that interest me most.

Fortunately, Apple relented on their original decision not to make 4 available as a standalone release for those of us who are quite happy to stick with the original versions of 1-3, and not be compelled to fork out for an expensive boxset simply for an improvement in sound quality.

But even here, there is the valid criticisms that only 13 of the tracks on 4 have not already appeared on Super de Lux versions of the latter albums. I probably will buy the last volume on CD at some point, but even though I remain committed to physical media in all things, it’s not a priority. I’m quite happy to stream on Spotify for now.

From what I’ve heard, Giles Martin has done a decent job of improving the sound quality on 1-3, but I’m not a great fan of remastering or remixing outtakes, and I don’t expect, nor want material recorded on a 2-reel tape in Paul’s front room in 1960 to sound like it was recorded yesterday in a modern recording studio, even if that should become possible at some point in the future, which it certainly isn’t yet.

There’s a charm in LoFi, and it’d be a shame if technology was to advance so much that that was lost.

As for the ‘Threetle’ tracks Now and Then remains as it was in was when it was finally released two years ago, i.e. still great, the remixed Free as a Bird is good, though I still prefer the ghostly version I made myself late for work waiting to hear for the first time thirty-years ago, and Giles has made a complete pig’s ear of Real Love.

Personally, I think the material on 4 should have been scattered through the complete set rather than presented separately, as was done recently with the CD versions of the remastered and extended Red and Blue albums. That way, the chronological nature of the project would have been maintained.

I’ll offer Take One of In My Life as the standout ‘new’ track so far. I think I actually prefer the song without George Martin’s sped-up piano solo, which has always sounded out of place to me on the finished recording. Plus, Baby You’re A Rich Man, takes 11/12 (‘Bring some cokes in, Mal; and some cannabis resin’) and All You Need Is Love, take 1.

Still no sign of Carnival of Light, the one Beatles track that, unless you have been a part of the absolute inner-sanctum, you’ve never heard (ignore the many YouTube fakes). As much as I love Revolution 9 (the most widely owned piece of Avant-Garde art in history, as someone put it), I blow hot and cold on this. Paul had wanted it on Anthology 2, and perhaps made a case for it for the new Anthology 4, which would be the logical place for it to be. But those who have heard it, say that it’s nowhere near as good nor as beautifully structured as Rev’9. So, do we really need a fourteen-minute collage of random noises to be added to the canon? Probably not, but it’s bound to come out one day. Paul usually gets his way in the end, as with the belated completion of Now and Then. A four- or five-minute edited version, just to give us an idea, would have been a sensible compromise.

But take 20 of Revolution, the best take, the version that links Revolution 1 and Revolution 9 in a single song, should definitely have been there.

It’s a great collection, but the compilation ‘1’ (not to be confused with Anthology 1), or, even better, the remastered Red and Blue are better introductions to the band for new fans. And 13 unreleased tracks is not enough to satisfy the hardcore of fandom.

Plus, the fiftieth anniversaries of both Help and Rubber Soul have been allowed to come and go unmarked. That’s what we really want: Remastered versions of the canon albums, together with whatever outtakes remain worth hearing. But Apple rarely give us what we want nowadays. Sadly, the days when the Beatles left classic singles off albums so fans didn’t have to buy the same song twice, are long gone.

Conclusion

As I’ve already indicated, we true Beatles fans will always want more, and hopefully, as with Get Back, we will get a Bu Ray set which will enable us to watch Anthology whenever we want. Better still, unlike Get Back, we will get an extended version.

But, Disney aside, I’m happy with what we’ve been given, at least as far as the television series goes. It both looks and sounds great, the edit has been done tastefully, and to paraphrase Paul’s habitual response to those who criticise the length of the White Album, ‘It’s the bloody Beatles Anthology, so shut up!’

The Beatles Anthology series is currently streaming on Disney +.

Anthony C Green, December 2025