The Beatles (1965 animated series)

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The Beatles
You should probably stick with listening to the British band instead of watching this American show!
Genre: Comedy
Animation
Running Time: 18 minutes (UK version)
30 minutes (Full version)
Country: United States
United Kingdom
Australia
Canada
Release Date: September 25, 1965 - October 21, 1967
Network(s): ABC (American Broadcasting Company) (U.S.)
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Television (Australia)
ITV (UK)
Created by: Al Brodax
Sylban Buck
Distributed by: King Features Productions
Starring: Paul Frees
Lance Percival
Julie Bennett
Carol Corbett
Seasons: 3
Episodes: 39

The Beatles is an American-British-Australian-Canadian animated television show created by Sylban Buck and Al Brodax, based on the English rock band of the same name. It ran from 1965 to 1967, with reruns up to 1969. The series was a historical milestone as the first weekly television series to feature animated versions of real, living people.

Plot

Every episode has a name of their songs and based on their lyrics. Each episode places The Beatles in all sorts of madcap situations, always running from fan-crazed girls, encountering local swindlers, goofy lovestick animals, or fleeing from ghosts, witches and vampires.

Misery Qualities

  1. Addressing the obvious issue, the cartoon misinterpreted the original band's essence. Despite being British, the characters in the cartoon speak with American accents, not voiced by the actual band members. The songs were also Americanized, presumably to cater to the U.S. audience, even though the band was already successful in the States with multiple Billboard Hot 100 number one hits. This unnecessary Americanization was met with disapproval, as the band's British identity was already embraced by their American fans, who, among other reasons, disliked the cartoon, leading to its failure to connect with the intended market.
  2. The animation is quite bland, flat, and uninspiring, appearing low-budget even by the standards of the 1960s. Although the animation improved later on, it still left something to be desired.
    • Sometimes the character designs are off-model.
    • Animation errors can occur, for instance, in "Roll Over Beethoven," where the song is attributed to John instead of George, even though the vocals are clearly George's.
    • In Season 3, the character designs became outdated since the Beatles had grown facial hair in reality. However, their updated looks were incorporated into the Season 3 intro, suggesting that budget constraints may have influenced this decision.
  3. John, Paul, and George often treat Ringo poorly, frequently making him the target of their jokes and subjecting him to ridicule.
  4. Ringo is the butt monkey of the series most of the time, though other characters do occasionally get misfortune too.
  5. Half of the episodes are just them singing with some plot on the side, arguably the worst offenders are episodes on longer songs like Strawberry Fields Forever, arguably glorified music videos, especially from the 5-minute length.
  6. When one of them is in trouble or on the edge of death, they just sing, which makes it mean-spirited.
  7. Until seasons 2 and 3, the singing sequences are recycled; something that makes the entire episodes annoying.
  8. There is abundance of racial humour in almost every episode of the series in which didn't age well. " Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby " is the worst offender by far, where the Japanese girls reflect almost every racist Asian stereotype in the book.
    • This is arguably a rumored reason why it rarely got home video releases or reruns (save for a run on MTV in the late-80s, which had many of the stereotypes edited out), due to John Lennon marrying Japanese musician Yoko Ono. Though copyright is another reason why that is the case.
  9. It was only made to cash-in onto the band's success and nothing more, since The Beatles were the most popular music act of all time (and still are to this very day) at the the time, and since King Features thought that their success would be beneficial for a TV Show, they decided to create a cheap TV series with none of the band members involved and decided to tone-down the British charm of the band and make many of the songs more American to appeal to an American audience despite The Beatles being extremely popular in America to begin with which made this change pointless, thus why this cartoon even exists to begin with and why it was hated by the band itself when it first aired.
  10. It ignored a good majority of the band's history due to how short-lived the show was and the extremely low budget, since The Beatles had one of the most interesting histories for any band out there and most of it was either good or bad depending on how it was in real-life or how the band explained it according to several interviews. An example would be the already aforementioned beards they had grown or how they had been getting influenced by Indian culture (The episode " All My Loving ", despite being a later episode of the series and taking place in India, does not touch on this).
  11. A few Beatles songs aren't featured in this cartoon despite most of them appearing in the show, likely due to budget problems, which upset many fans of the band at the time and resulted in the cartoon feeling like a soulless cash-in that King Features made just to prompt The Beatles to cartoon fans, which was rendered irrelevant since The Yellow Submarine movie came out a year after the cartoon ended and was well-received and is considered to be a milestone in animation and is beloved by many cartoon fans alike unlike this travesty, so it failed at being an actual Beatles cartoon at that.
  12. Some of the songs used are arguably inappropriate for a kids show, but couldn’t be replaced due to the shoestring budget.
    • The song Got To Get You Into My Life is fairly obviously about weed.
    • The song She’s A Woman also contains the lyrics “ Turn me on when I get lonely “, which is another reference to weed. To be fair, the singalong was replaced with “ I Feel Fine “.
    • Drive My Car is about sex.

Twist and Shout Qualities

  1. Some episodes are well animated, especially in later seasons.
    • The singalong sequences in later seasons are creative in nature, almost representing Yellow Submarine, a later Beatles animated project.
  2. Despite being the Butt-Monkey of the band, Ringo is much more likeable then John, Paul and George.
  3. The humor and gags are creative and clever.
  4. It actually has The Beatles' music, with their original vocal tracks intact.
  5. The voice acting, while not British in the slightest, is mostly good.
  6. It's one of those "so bad it's good" shows.
  7. Some Beatles fans can find it enjoyable.
  8. It gave rise to other cartoons based on bands, such as The Osmonds, The Jackson 5, New Kids on the Block and Puffy AmiYumi.

Trivia

  • The show has never been released on VHS or DVD due to music rights issues. Episodes were available on YouTube but were taken down due to copyright infringement, And many users who uploaded the show were suspended from YouTube for copyright infringement on the music sequences, though songs of the current edition of the Red and Blue albums are generally allowed on the site.
  • Originally, the Beatles disliked the cartoon; however, as time went on they grew to like it. In 1972, Lennon commented, "I still get a blast out of watching the Beatles cartoons on TV." In 1999, Harrison said, "I always kind of liked [the cartoons]. They were so bad or silly that they were good, if you know what I mean, and I think the passage of time might make them more fun now."
  • The series was rerun on MTV in the late 1980’s.

Videos

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