It has been billed as a “David v Goliath” battle of the Beatles by producers.
In one corner is Sam Mendes’s quartet of biopics starring Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan, with permission from Apple Corps to include tracks such as Hey Jude, Let It Be and Yesterday.
In the other is a cast of unknown 19 to 21-year-olds with barely a Wikipedia credit between them, relying on cover versions of tracks from artists including Consuelo Velázquez, Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow.
However, those behind Hamburg Days, a six-part German drama, which will air on the BBC next year, believe that their origin story will provide fans with valuable insight into the band’s under-explored formative years.
Hamburg Days is set in the early Sixties in the city’s red-light district, where the inexperienced group from Liverpool, which included drummer Pete Best and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, cut their teeth by playing six-hour residencies.
The Beatles at the Star-Club in Hamburg in May 1962 Horst Fascher/K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns
It is based on the autobiography of Klaus Voormann, the German artist who influenced their distinctive look and designed the artwork for their 1966 album Revolver.
Andrew Eaton, a producer on the show, said Hamburg Days would be a significant improvement on Backbeat, the 1994 film that covered similar territory.
“John Lennon once said: ‘I was born in Liverpool but I grew up in Hamburg,’” Eaton said. “So we were interested in telling the story as if it was a band that no one had ever heard of who were desperately trying to be successful when they were literally just kids. Their Hamburg days have hardly been celebrated at all.”
Pete Best, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison in Hamburg, May 1962Horst Fascher/K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns
The British cast includes Rhys Mannion as John Lennon, Ellis Murphy as Paul McCartney, Harvey Brett as George Harrison, Louis Landau as Stuart Sutcliffe and Patrick Gilmore as Pete Best.
Producers were effectively limited to unknown actors through their desire to recruit those under the age of 24. However, their ambition to prioritise musicians proved only partially successful.
“Ellis, who plays Paul, is a really talented musician, but he’s right-handed so he has had to learn to play left-handed,” Eaton said. “Louis has never played bass guitar in his life and is left-handed and is having to play right-handed.”
Despite wanting their performances to look authentic to viewers, the actors will not be playing the Beatles’ renditions of Chuck Berry’s Twist and Shout, Consuelo Velázquez’s Bésame Mucho and Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow’s A Taste of Honey themselves. Instead, 21 tracks have been recorded in the basement of the Casbah Coffee Club by the Liverpool band the Savage Young Beatles.
“They are like a punk version of the Beatles who do all the Hamburg stuff,” said Eaton. “We were going to use older session musicians but then realised that there’s something about young bands that mean they just play in a different way. People say that when they heard the Beatles play in Hamburg it made the hairs stand up on the back of their necks and we want to capture that.”
In Sam Mendes’s quartet of biopics Harris Dickinson will play John Lennon, Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan plays Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn plays George HarrisonJohn Russo
Eaton welcomed the competition from Mendes’s high-profile quartet of films, which are due to be released simultaneously in April 2028.
“We are the David to their Goliath but we are trying to tell a very different story,” he said. “Ours is about before they became famous and they have access to all the Beatles songs and we have to use non-Beatles songs. They will hopefully complement each other.”