The BBC has acquired the six-part documentary series Hamburg Days, a drama series that tells the story of the Beatles‘ early days as a scrappy band trying to make a name for themselves in the German city’s smoke-filled clubs. The series is based on the autobiography of Beatles associate Klaus Voormann, the musician and producer who lived with the group in a London flat in the early 1960s, designed the cover of the band’s Revolver album and performed on solo albums by John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the 1970s following the band’s break-up.
According to the BBC, Voormann, 87, was a consultant on the series, which it said is set in the early 1960s, in the “smoke-filled clubs of Hamburg’s St. Pauli’s red-light district, [where] an inexperienced young rock ‘n’ roll band from Liverpool collide with two young artists, Klaus Voormann and [early Beatles photographer] Astrid Kirchherr. Together they help spark a transformation that turns a scrappy group of teenagers into the greatest music phenomenon the world has ever known: The Beatles.”
The BBC’s head of scripted pre-buy acquisitions, Sue Deeks, said in a statement that the series tells the “fascinating story of how, in the space of two short years, a raw young band from Liverpool honed their music skills in Hamburg, before returning home to become an overnight worldwide success. It is an incredible story, accompanied (of course) by an amazing soundtrack!” At press time an air date for the series — which will screen on the BBC iPlayer and BBC One — had not yet been announced.
No cast has been announced either, but the showrunner will be The Crown director Christian Schwochow, who will be joined by director Mat Whitecross (Oasis: Supersonic, Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams) and composer David Holmes (Ocean’s Thirteen, Good Vibrations).
The story of the band’s early years playing Hamburg clubs was previously covered in the 1994 movie Backbeat, which focused on the same period and the relationship between early bassist Stu Sutcliffe and Lennon.
It’s just one of a number of Beatles projects to sate fans’ insatiable thirst for Fab Four material, including the just-released remaster of The Beatles Anthology, which revisits the eight-part 1995 documentary series, adding a new ninth chapter. In addition, director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917) is hard at work on The Beatles — a Four-Film Cinematic Event, an expansive four-part series due out in April 2028 that will tell the stories of Lennon, Harrison, Starr and Paul McCartney in separate chapters.
