Next up: it's the 2010 BBC TV movie starring Christopher Ecclestonas John Lennon, and Andrew Scott as Paul McCartney. We get into the film's approach, in which it frames the story around meetings with his father, and ask how successfully it makes the point it's trying to: that Freddie Lennon's abandoning him was the main catalyst for John's emotional turmoil, and that primal scream therapy allowed him to overcome it.

We look too at Eccleston's performance, and ask how he stacks up against the other Lennon big hitters like Ian Hart and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. And does the film do Yoko Ono a disservice?

• You can pick up Lennon Naked on DVD.
• The BBC website has a page on the film with a couple of clips: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sv451
• The Second Coming, the other Eccleston performance that Ed mentions: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353104/
• Christopher Fairbank in Eastenders, playing Eddie Knight, a very similar character to Freddie Lennon: https://youtu.be/dTa6ZhOa-6s

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

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Many viewers of last year's Beatles '64 seemed to ask the question: "Why does this exist when we already have The First US Visit?" So we thought we'd have a go at an answer. This is a 1991 re-edit of the Maysles brothers' original 1964 Granada TV film What's Happening! The Beatles in the USA, and a much straighter, more chronological telling of the short tour's story using much of the same footage. We ask how this compares to Beatles '64, and in particular we discuss the effect of having no narration or talking heads, and whether this creates a void of context that needs filling. Apple later bought the rights and released it on DVD in 2004, and we look at how Apple's approach to documentary releases differs 20 years on, now the Beatles legacy project is in full swing.

• You can pick up the Apple DVD easily enough. The film is also on archive.org at the moment, but who knows for how long ... https://g.co/kgs/Y26cAuf
• The "making of" documentary included on the DVD, which we both generally preferred to the film itself: https://youtu.be/38jmSpSPujY
• The best we can do for a copy of What's Happening! The Beatles in the USA is here, but it's only 38 minutes of what should be an hour and 21, so: https://archive.org/details/vts-01-3_202011
• 7 Seconds by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry, the soundtrack to Ed's 1994 French exchange: https://youtu.be/wqCpjFMvz-k
• We Love You Beatles by The Carefrees: as Matt warns, listen at your own risk: https://youtu.be/Hj3A3WcjBDE

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

• Instagram https://instagram.com/beatlesfilmspod
• Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/beatlesfilmspod.bsky.social
• YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@BeatlesFilmsPodcast
• X https://x.com/beatlesfilmpod
• Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/304654901827622

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this year's Christmas special in which we, the fearless investigative journalists that we are, refuse to be silenced and meet head-on the issue the mainstream media doesn't want us to: can Paul McCartney make mashed potatoes?

On 17 December 1998 Paul took part in a live webcast to promote Wide Prairie, a compilation album of Linda's songs, released six months after her death in April 1998. In it he fronted a cookery segment in which he made mashed potatoes as part of a promotion for her book: Linda McCartney on Tour: Over 200 Meat-free Dishes from Around the World. We ask: does his addition of raw onions into the dish represent a bold embrace of the avant garde, betraying the influence of Stockhausen? How significant is it that Paul chose the DIY ethic of a webcast whose content he could control when he was grieving for his wife? And how else did Paul and George Harrison interact with the early internet from the late nineties?

Merry Christmas and thanks as always for your support this year. We'll be back with season six in January.

• Watch the whole webcast (this link will also take you straight to the mashed potatoes segment): https://youtu.be/plrN81ISkh4?si=XM2FPqDxsQzdmxdv&t=3768
• Some info about The Fireman webcast from 2 October 1998, although no footage is available (unless you've got some?): https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Fireman_(lost_live_Youth_and_Paul_McCartney%27s_band_internet_webcast;_1998)
• Watch Grateful Dead: A Photofilm by Paul and Linda McCartney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m7NkYfJCYc
• An example of The Big Breakfast, the 1990s UK TV show with a similar crew-participation ethic: https://youtu.be/LFqPHv7nh1A
• The clip from Sleepless in Seattle we mention: https://youtu.be/BHs6iLRvAQM

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

• Twitter https://twitter.com/beatlesfilmpod
• Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/304654901827622/
• Instagram https://instagram.com/beatlesfilmspod
• YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@BeatlesFilmsPodcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.