The Beatles Anthology Remains An Epic Documentary Series
Almost 29 years after airing on TV and its later expansion on VHS/DVD, The Beatles Anthology remains an epic documentary series.
I became a fan of The Beatles through watching The Beatles Anthology during its three-night ABC broadcast in 1995. It would lead to both Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road becoming the first CDs in my collection. I would also pick up a guitar for the first time, later dropping the trumpet. In college, I took a piano course for the same reason but never quite mastered it. Of course, there’s the time that I saw Paul McCartney in concert back in 2011. That’s my Beatles story in a nutshell but none of it happens without ABC becoming A Beatles C. Fun fact: I came into the series because of all the ABC stars promoting it at the time so you can blame the misleading marketing for my becoming a fan.
While the initial broadcast ran about six hours, the expanded DVD is even longer. The eight DVD volumes span 1940 through their breakup after recording Abbey Road. On top of that, there’s another disc with 81 minutes of special features. All of the music is remastered for 5.1. I took in all of it in just over a 24-hour period prior to the Olympics kicking off in Paris. This was my first time sitting down to watch the documentary since the 1995 broadcast. I’ve been wanting to add the box set to my collection but my preference was to wait for a Blu-ray upgrade. While a Blu-ray upgrade now seems unlikely, rewatching has been on my agenda for a few weeks and as they say, it was now or never.
Source: Danielle Solzman/solzyatthemovies.com
