Series Review: "The Beatles: Get Back" (2021).

"Experience the 3-part event." This is The Beatles: Get Back. This documentary series directed by Peter Jackson. The series takes audiences back in time to the band’s January 1969 recording sessions, which became a pivotal moment in music history. The docuseries showcases The Beatles’ creative process as they attempt to write fourteen new songs in preparation for their first live concert in over two years. Faced with a nearly impossible deadline, the strong bonds of friendship shared by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are put to the test. The docuseries is compiled from nearly sixty hours of unseen footage shot over twenty-one days, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969, and from more than a hundred and fifty hours of unheard audio, most of which has been locked in a vault for over half a century. Jackson is the only person in fifty years to have been given access to this Beatles treasure trove, all of which has now been brilliantly restored. What emerges is an unbelievably intimate portrait of The Beatles, showing how, with their backs against the wall, they could still rely on their friendship, good humor, and creative genius. While plans derail and relationships are put to the test, some of the world’s most iconic songs are composed and performed. The docuseries features – for the first time in its entirety – The Beatles’ last live performance as a group, the unforgettable rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row, as well as other songs and classic compositions featured on the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be.

The series employed film restoration techniques developed for Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old. Sixty hours of film footage and over a hundred and fifty hours of audio stemming from the original Let It Be film project were made available to Jackson's team. In reference to the long-reported acrimony surrounding the original Get Back project, Jackson wrote in a press statement that he was "relieved to discover the reality is very different to the myth ... Sure, there's moments of drama – but none of the discord this project has long been associated with." Jackson spent close to four years editing the series. It was created with cooperation from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon (Yoko Ono) and George Harrison (Olivia Harrison), as well as music supervisor Giles Martin (son of George Martin and a regular producer of Beatles projects since 2006). The series was intended to be released theatrically in 2020 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the release of Let It Be (1969) and its accompanying album. However, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced the release date to be pushed into 2021. The film was subsequently repurposed as a three-part mini-series and released on Disney+. Disney was persuaded by the filmmakers to allow for the inclusion of profanity, with viewer discretion warnings at the start of each episode.

This is an extraordinary experience which has rightly earned plaudits around the world. Jackson has used modern post-production techniques to bring alive The Beatles in all of their wonderful glory.

Simon says The Beatles: Get Back receives:

Also, see my review for They Shall Not Grow Old.

Series Review: "Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier" ("Dig Deeper - Das Verschwinden von Birgit Meier") (2021).

From the writer/director of Above and Below comes Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier (Dig Deeper - Das Verschwinden von Birgit Meier). This German true crime documentary miniseries written and directed by Nicolas Steiner. After Birgit Meier vanishes in 1989, police missteps plague the case for years, but her brother never wavers in his tireless quest to find the truth.

In 1989, Birgit Meier disappeared. Initially, investigators suspected that she had died by suicide or had been killed by her husband, but they later focused the investigation on Kurt-Werner Wichmann, who was working as a gardener at the Lüneberg cemetery. Wichmann was interrogated, and despite the flimsy alibi of being with his wife and walking the dog, he was not checked closely. He also concealed the fact that he was on sick leave at the time of Meier's disappearance, but the police did not inquire further. Only with the establishment of a new prosecutor in Lüneberg did further investigations begin. In 1993, charges of suspected murder in Birgit Meier's case were brought against Wichmann, and the police searched his house. Investigators found two small-caliber rifles, a converted sharp gas pistol, stun guns, mufflers, handcuffs, sedatives and sleeping pills, as well as a secret torture room with a soundproof door, which only he and his brother were allowed to enter. There was a buried, red Ford sports coupe in the backyard, with blood on its back seat. Body-tracking dogs were used several times to search the property, but no bodies were found. Wichmann fled and was arrested in Heilbronn when he was involved in a traffic accident; weapons were found in his vehicle. Ten days after his arrest, Wichmann hung himself in the Heimsheim Prison. He had attempted suicide previously. He left strange farewell letters in which he asked, among other things, his brother to clean the gutter. After his death, the murders in the woods around Lüneberg ceased, and further investigation was discontinued. His vehicle and the items found in it were disposed of by police. In 2017, Birgit Meier's remains were ultimately recovered under the concrete floor of a garage of a house on the outskirts of Lüneburg that Wichmann had previously occupied. On 19 January 2018, it became known via an autopsy report from the Hannover Medical School that Birgit Meier had been shot. Lüneberg Police President Robert Kruse stated that the perpetrator was a serial killer who may have killed beyond Germany. He announced a thorough review of old cases, with Wichmann being considered as a possible suspect. As a result, analysts from the State Criminal Police Office of Lower Saxony filtered out twenty-four unsolved cases, in particular homicides and missing persons.

Steiner certainly sought out a sickening true crime story on a decades long disappearance and while the filmmaking has an extended Unsolved Mysteries quality to it the storytelling is engrossing and heartbreaking. The series starts off like so many other true-crime stories of its ilk, but soon finds its moral footing and lands in a more moving, profound place.

Simon says Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier (Dig Deeper - Das Verschwinden von Birgit Meier) receives: