Review of Beatles` Biggest Secrets

Introduction

Channel Five, or five as they prefer to be known, alongside both ITV and the BBC currently have a tendency to bring out some of the most banal documentaries that terrestrial TV has seen. It wasn`t always like this, but the culture we live in today seems to lap it up so we ultimately get what we deserve.

This release is a DVD release of one of their biggest secrets series. Not sure how long the series actually was but I know that one was done on Abba, where the biggest secret was apparently that one of the singers was the daughter of a German soldier posted to occupied Norway. Hardly a secret, I remembered reading about that in a comic strip in Look-In back in the late 70`s. Still, I`m sure someone was shocked somewhere…

This documentary promises to take the viewer back stage and into a Beatles world of sex, drugs and rock n` roll…

Video

Mix of archive footage and modern talking heads. Quality of some of the pictures is a little poor but it`s not too distracting. The director has also decided to do an arty job of odd camera angles and grainy picture on the various talking heads prior to them appearing for the first time on camera.

Audio

Dialogue is reasonably clear whether it`s the narration or those being interviewed, although there are no subtitles available. I can`t believe the number of discs I`m seeing at the moment where this is not an option. It should be standard by now on all releases. As this is basically an unauthorised documentary, there are no well-known Beatles tracks included. Musical accompaniment is provided by Beatles tribute (only for the Hamburg era) band The Prellies, a more rock n` roll vibe than the pop music everyone knows them for.

Features

Nothing.

Conclusion

I wasn`t expecting great things from this and I wasn`t disappointed. It`s your typical modern documentary with a mix of archive footage and interviews with people on the periphery rather than any of the main players. It just happens that we`re discussing The Beatles rather than Britney Spears or any other modern artist. I suspect really that it`s only due to the enduring fame of the group that this programme has made the transition from small screen to disc.

I`m not an expert on The Beatles by any means, I know some of their more well-known songs but have never bought an album. Despite that, enough stories about that early days and the height of their fame have been published so that nothing exposed here is really new. Some of the people have relatively interesting things to say about their time with the boys, some make *gosh* bold pronouncements without any kind of proof (Epstein`s love letters to the boys or Lennon going on holiday with the manager), whilst some are clearly speculating on how certain things might have happened. On the latter, why would you include the opinion of someone who knew the band only in their Hamburg days in a segment about how Epstein cleaned up and dressed the band? Sloppy work that just shows you the level that this documentary is aiming at. Let`s have some decent documentaries, eh?

I can see that a documentary of this nature might interest a few people when it appears on the TV schedules, but I really can`t see who would not only buy this but watch it more than once.