Associated Press
Old video is used to allow (from left) George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon narrate the program.
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Ellen Gray: New documentary shows Beatles' early days
THE BEATLES ON RECORD. 10 tonight, History Channel.
MY FATHER said they'd never last.
But more than four decades after he called me into the living room to see some British guys perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show," here they are on his once-beloved History Channel in a one-hour special called "The Beatles on Record."
Would it be sacrilegious to ask if they might not be bigger even than "Ice Road Truckers"?
OK, maybe not.
But just as every snippet of Michael Jackson on tape will eventually be repurposed - thanks to the magic of CGI, there's talk the late King of Pop isn't finished making movies - all four Beatles live on in sound and images that seemingly yield endless amounts of programming.
Directed by Bob Smeaton, who was also the guiding hand behind the "Beatles Anthology" series, "The Beatles on Record" is a production of Apple Corps. Ltd., so if you're looking for ancient gossip - or even a glimpse of Yoko Ono - you've come to the wrong place.
For those, though, who loved the music and especially loved the way it grew and changed, there's undeniable appeal in a show that, through the magic of old recordings, is narrated by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (with considerable help from their producer, George Martin).
"They weren't great, but there was something about them that was worth investigating," says Martin about his first encounter with the group, which led to their first album, "Please Please Me," recorded in 1962.
Covering the period from that first album through "Abbey Road," "The Beatles on Record" is mostly about just that - the records.
Some of the interviews appear to have been conducted with members of the Fab Four on their way in to the studio, though the best bits are merely snatches of conversation that took place during the recording process.
Irony, of course, abounds, as when a still clean-cut Lennon tells a reporter: "People demand that you think how long are you going to last, well, you can't say. You can be bigheaded and say, 'Yeah, we're going to last 10 years.' But as soon as you've said that, you think, 'You know, we're lucky if we last three months.' "
McCartney, meanwhile, seems determined to find a way to go the distance.
"Well, obviously, we can't keep playing the same sort of music till we're about 40, because . . . old men playing 'From Me to You,' nobody's going to want to know them," he says.
A few years later, after the music's grown more complicated, it's touring they no longer relish.
"There must be a point where they [the tours] don't work anymore, because they're not to do with what we're doing, record-wise," says Lennon, while McCartney notes that "it's gone downhill, performance. Because we can't develop when no one can hear us."
CBS goes to the dogs
It's only fitting that Petfinder.com is using this weekend's Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation on CBS, "A Dog Named Christmas" (9 p.m. Sunday, Channel 3), to try to get people to open their homes to a shelter animal for the holidays.
(If not much, much longer.)
Because my first thought after watching the first in an avalanche of holiday movies coming our way in the coming days and weeks was that it was exactly like spending two hours on the animal-rescue site.
Which is to say that if you don't already have a dog and your circumstances or inclination absolutely prohibit your acquiring one, this might be a dangerous one to watch.
Because "Christmas" is sadly irresistible, and so is Noel Fisher ("The Riches") in his portrayal of a developmentally delayed 20-year-old named Todd McCray whose love of animals leads him to try to find at least temporary homes for an entire shelter full of strays over the holidays.
Bruce Greenwood and Linda Emond play Todd's parents, and if I never quite bought the reasoning of Greenwood's character, George, a crusty Kansas farmer who's adamant in his refusal to let his youngest son have a dog, I did, at least, buy the relationship between George and Mary Ann McCray (Emond).
If only because whenever they were talking, it represented time that Todd was not showing me yet another adorable canine and (almost) making me forget that I already have a rescue dog, thank you very much.
Boyle's back
From YouTube to the TV Guide Channel might not be as big a leap as it once seemed, but Susan Boyle, the "Britain's Got Talent" contestant who catapulted to fame this year, is making it.
"I Dreamed a Dream: The Susan Boyle Story" will have its U.S. premiere on the cable outlet at 8 p.m. Dec. 13, with Boyle performing songs from her new album. *
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