A version of this story about the Beatles first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
They formed in the late 1950s, changed the world in 1964 and broke up in 1970. Two of them died, one in 1980 and one in 2001. And now, almost 60 years after the release of “Love Me Do,” can the Beatles really be the hottest thing in the nonfiction categories at this year’s Emmys?
Well, yeah, they can. Peter Jackson’s three-part, nearly eight-hour series “The Beatles: Get Back” rocked its way to five nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program. (On the Disney+ slate of nominated programs, they trailed only “Moon Knight” and “Loki.”) That includes the first-ever nomination for Beatle Ringo Starr, an executive producer on the series, and the third nom for his fellow Beatle and fellow producer Paul McCartney, whose first two noms came for the specials “McCartney in St. Petersburg” in 2006 and “Paul McCartney’s Standing Stone” in 1998.
(John Lennon and George Harrison were not alive to work on the series — but their widows, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison, were also nominated.)
And in the sound editing and sound mixing categories, “Get Back” will be competing against Hulu’s “McCartney 3, 2, 1,” a six-part series in which Paul McCartney sits down with producer Rick Rubin to discuss his life and his work. “McCartney 3, 2, 1” was also nominated for nonfiction cinematography.
The nominations came a couple of weeks after McCartney turned 80, a birthday which coincided with the end of a tour that found him playing near three-hour, 37-song shows. Those concerts included a special “duet” with the late John Lennon courtesy of footage from Jackson’s “Get Back,” which was assembled from footage shot over the course of a month in January 1969. Another sign that the Cute Beatle was a fan of the series: He not only borrowed some of the video, he named this year’s three-month jaunt the “Got Back” tour. “McCartney wanted to get a drink immediately after seeing it, he was so happy,” music supervisor and nominated sound mixer Giles Martin said. “And I suppose if you do eight hours of something and people still want more, that’s the best compliment you can get.”
By the way, you can find a few more music programs among this year’s nominees: CBS’s concert special “Adele: One Night Only,” Netflix’s cautionary “jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” and FX’s “Controlling Britney Spears” (which is much longer on legal battles than musical excursions). Those three combined for seven nominations, or one less than the eight for “The Beatles: Get Back” and “McCartney 3, 2, 1.” In other words, the Fab Four are still the toppermost of the poppermost, as the lads used to say.
Read more from the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue here.
