It’s hard to call the reissue of “The Beatles Anthology” essential viewing. The nine-episode music documentary series may be daunting to people who are not already Beatlemaniacs, while Beatlemaniacs of a certain age surely already watched it when it was originally released in 1995.
The selling propositions for the Disney+ re-release are digitally remastered audio and video, and one new episode featuring unreleased behind-the-scenes footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the studio in 1994 and 1995. It’s not must-see TV. What it is, however, is a testament to the timelessness of the Beatles’ music and story. The reissue keeps the legend of the lads from Liverpool alive for fans old and new. It’s also a savvy way for Paul and Ringo to reassert their official version of the Beatles’ story before director Sam Mendes’ biopics come out in 2028.
“The Beatles Anthology” tells the band’s story in chronological order, from childhood to breakup. Each rigorously detailed episode roughly corresponds to a year in the life, and the band members and few close confidantes describe what happened in their own words, with the added perspective of over 20 years of hindsight — except for John Lennon, who speaks through archival interviews. The “Anthology” is a grand, influential achievement (it established the template for large-scale music documentaries) that makes an indisputable case for the Beatles’ importance, whichever version of the show you’re watching.
The 2025 version, which is the first time the documentary has been available to stream, streamlines the narrative and makes technical improvements. The original home video release spread eight episodes over 11 hours, while the new edition cuts the episodes down to an hour. (Six-hour versions of the series aired on ABC in the U.S. and ITV in the U.K. almost exactly 30 years ago.) The audio and video have been painstakingly remastered by Peter Jackson’s companies Park Road Post and WingNut Films, who did similar restoration work on “The Beatles: Get Back,” the 2021 docuseries that’s also available on Disney+. Some of the black and white footage has an uncanny smoothness that hits uncomfortably in the age of AI, but the color footage looks uniformly fantastic, and the audio restoration is nothing short of remarkable.
Performance audio of the Beatles is often low quality and drowned out by screaming fans, but the sound teams, led by music supervisor Giles Martin and supervising sound editor Emile de la Rey, excavate the music in crystal clear clarity. The machine learning technology WingNut uses — called MAL, after Beatles roadie Mal Evans — is a best-case example of the use of artificial intelligence tools in film and television, using new technology to strip away the problems of old to find the life hidden beneath layers of noise.
The final episode is all new. It’s built around the making of the songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which were unfinished demos of Lennon’s that the then-surviving Beatles finished and released with the “Anthology” as the first new Beatles songs in 25 years. The new episode is a retrospective of a retrospective, which could feel inessential, but it’s the episode that finds McCartney, Harrison and Starr most directly dealing with Lennon’s death. His tragic absence still looms large over the whole project, and it’s very moving to see his bandmates work out their feelings about his loss the best way they know how — through music. “John’s dead, but we’re actually gonna be able to play with him again,” as McCartney puts it.
Fans who remember watching the series 30 years ago may have the same opinions about it as they did back then. The tight focus on the experience of what it was like to be the Beatles means other perspectives get left out. It would have been interesting to hear from wives and children, but the Beatles’ family lives go mostly unexplored. However, viewers do get a sense of how unimaginably famous the Beatles were — kids don’t even scream for Taylor Swift like they lost their minds for the moptops — and how their brotherhood got them through the madness; and then how those same bonds became a burden and helped lead to their breakup when they got older and needed to become their own men, not just be the Beatles. But for eight years, that bond created alchemy. The documentary shows how these four impossibly young men came together and changed the world, and it couldn’t have happened if anything about their dynamic was different. “The Beatles Anthology” is a story about a miracle.
More time has passed between when “The Beatles Anthology” was originally released and now than between its original release and the Beatles’ breakup. The fact that the doc can be revisited at all is a testament to the band’s enduring appeal. There are children today growing up with the Beatles’ music. “The Beatles Anthology” on Disney+ will be there for those new fans to learn the story behind the songs if they want to know more when they’re ready, and that’s reason enough for it to exist.
“The Beatles Anthology” premieres Wednesday, Nov. 26 on Disney+.
