THE
CRITICS
TELEVISION
The Fab
Four — in
the raw
The Beatles: Get Back
Disney+
Selling Sunset Netflix
The Princes and the Press
BBC2
An Audience with Adele ITV
“Nearly eight hours long” are
not the words any critic wants
to hear — even if it’s one of
the greatest, most thrilling,
absorbing topics in the world.
You could probably do eight
hours on a big war — The
World at War, one of the best
docs ever, is 32 hours. Or a
sports doc — The Last Dance
flew by at ten. But the Beatles?
I could take 90 minutes, two
hours tops, if there’s
something really revealing
about the beige genius that is
Paul McCartney.
The Beatles: Get Back is
more reality experience than
documentary, a vast opus
covering a fortnight in January
1969 when the band had to
produce songs for a new album
— their last big collaboration.
Everything was filmed, so the
idea is we can watch the band
disintegrate, almost in real
time. Technically it has been
edited down from 130 hours
of footage, but God, it doesn’t
feel edited at all. You watch
Yoko endlessly picking over
John, or George asking for
sandwiches, and you wonder,
what exactly has been cut?
Paul going to the bog?
It is interesting to watch
some of the ideas come to
light: where they should do
the final gig to unveil the
work, for example. Paul
suggests “a place we’re not
allowed”: perhaps they
could “trespass” at “the
Houses of Parliament”.
“I mean, that’s an
interesting thought,” says the
swooping, dowager-duchess
figure of Michael Lindsay-
Hogg, who made the original
footage. “What about a
hospital? I don’t mean for
really sick kids, I mean kids
with broken legs ...” And they
can’t walk, Paul interrupts,
until “the finale”. I could have
done with more of that —
egomaniacal messianic
insanity with a tinge of
wrongness. Instead we got the
rock equivalent of a Japanese
puppy cam.
Unlike puppies, though,
the band were aware they
were on camera, only letting
go once in the first nearly
three-hour episode, after a
lunch with a dissatisfied
George Harrison. In my
mind’s eye, a star leaving a
band is serious fireworks,
anger, fights, tears, flaming
velvet — but all that happens
is Harrison just doesn’t come
back, the camera focusing
comically on his empty
votive cushion. It is — how do
I put it? — quite dull.
There is a childlike quality
to all of this: it is as if nothing
seriously bad can happen
when you’re this famous and
successful. You can do what
you like: you can hand over
hours of meandering bollocks
for it to be crafted into a piece
of intense hagiography by the
guy who did The Lord of the
Rings — the director is Peter
Jackson — and it’s still
hailed as a masterpiece
when it isn’t.
In the absence of
real meat, we are
forced to nibble on
tiny details. The
ratty fur coats, Paul’s
curdled cherub face,McCartney is fascinatingly
annoying, unable
to be within 10ft of a piano
without bumbling over and
tinkering, or adding that
whoop over the tune. I found
myself totally drawn into his
compulsive doggedness,
while no one else is remotely
enjoying themselves, least of
all the unlikeable John.
It’s back — my favourite
reality show ever. For those
of you who haven’t seen
Selling Sunset, this
shameless tribute to Mammon
is set at an estate agent’s in
Los Angeles. I thought they
couldn’t go lower than the
previous series, when they
managed to string out one
minor altercation between
two of the glamazon agents
into a Wagnerian ten-episode
grudge match that ended up
with three of them screaming
at each other at a wedding.
But it seems I was wrong.
We return to the land of
high heels and “indoor/
outdoor living” after a18-month hiatus. The show’s
villain, Christine Quinn, is
now hugely pregnant. “This is
the longest I’ve not had Botox,”
she sighs, as she arranges her
baby shower, complete with a
“flower wall”. “Did I design
this?” she asks her party
planner. “Oh my God, I’m
such a genius.”
Not that Quinn’s pregnancy
has dimmed the producers’
desire to present her as a
ground zero of back-stabbing
and “lying”. Barely a scene
goes by without us being
reminded what a
manipulative cow she is. If the
producers suspect the show is
remotely flagging — and there
are moments — one of the cast
members will immediately
utter the kryptonite words,
“Can I chat with you?” before
we relocate to one of LA’s
odder coffee shops or seafood
palaces, where they will
remind us exactly what a
calculating ho Quinn is.
The new series felt a little
Quinn-centric. I know she isCAMILLA
LONG
the Hare Krishna who came
with George, sitting silently,
watching — now there’s a test
of your religion. Ringo, on the
drums, looking as if he has
died and gone to some
peculiar sort of post-
fame hell where he
must watch John
and Paul sniping for
ever, while ignoring
George. They are
28 but look 40.The Beatles: Get Back is more like an
endless reality show than a documentary
I could have
done with
more of the
egomaniacal
messianic
insanity
End of an era Peter Jackson’s
The Beatles: Get Back© 2020 APPLE CORPS LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED18 28 November 2021