The Nation's Favourite Beatles Number One, ITV, review: 'grin-inducing'
I’ve got a bone to pick with The Nation's Favourite Beatles Number One. Hippy-dippy ballads such as We Can Work It Out and Let It Be finished far too high in the list, while rock classics Paperback Writer and Hard Day’s Night didn’t get the status they deserved. Every viewer doubtless had their own quibbles, too. Ranking Beatles songs is always a hiding to nothing but that’s the beauty of such exercises - they’re a controversy-stirrer and conversation-starter.
The week that their greatest hits collection, 1, got a deluxe bells-and-whistles re-release, ITV capitalised with this evocative two-hour tribute, framed around a public poll. The Mersey moptops notched 27 chart-topping singles in the UK and US, hence we counted down viewers’ favourites from 27 to one.
As always with such hagiographies, the great and good queued up to offer soundbites. There was pop royalty such as Bjorn from Abba, Tito Jackson, Lamont Dozier, Noel Gallagher and Sandie Shaw (sadly, it was a headshot so we couldn’t tell if she was barefoot). There were fans from the Sixties, such as model Twiggy and actress Sue Johnston. There were random celebrities, including David Tennant, Michael Palin, Ken Dodd and, ahem, Alan Johnson MP.
By: Michael Hogan
Source: The Telegraph
