'The Beatles Anthology' review: Still the definitive telling of the Fab 4's story

WHAT IT'S ABOUT "The Beatles Anthology," the legendary hourslong chronicle of the Fab Four in their own words that first aired on TV in 1995, returns on Disney+ in a remastered form, complete with a new ninth episode.

It remains the most essential telling of The Beatles' story, covering the journey from Liverpool to Beatlemania to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "The White Album," the breakup and beyond, often in extraordinarily precise, minute detail, built around the memories of the four men who lived it.

Conversations with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were recorded over a period of time in the early 1990s, while John Lennon has his say thanks to expansive archival interviews. The ninth and final episode consists of previously unreleased footage of the surviving Beatles reuniting in the '90s to work on the "Anthology" series.

The remastering here includes an upgrade to the sound mix and a restoration of footage, according to Disney.

MY SAY A return to "The Beatles Anthology" doesn't have the same revelatory impact, as, say, Peter Jackson's "The Beatles: Get Back" documentary from 2021, which showed the band fraying at the seams while working on the "Let It Be" album in 1969.

The story told in the anthology has lodged itself so deeply into the firmament at this point that revisiting it again feels like watching the greatest hits of the greatest hits.

But that's not the case for younger audiences discovering this for the first time, and it shouldn't dilute an essential truth: If you're going to go back to where it all began and relive it all, no project has ever done it better.

A viewing of the first three episodes in 2025 highlights the fundamental, raw power in the anthology's simplicity. The Beatles long ago lost control of their own story — it started to vanish on them somewhere around that famous Kennedy Airport arrival on Feb. 7, 1964, and completely dissipated on "The Ed Sullivan Show" two days later.

"The Beatles Anthology" allowed them to reclaim just a bit of it. McCartney, Harrison and Ringo have extraordinarily precise recollections of seemingly every experience over the course of their journey. Their memories veer from funny to sad to surreal, but they're always vivid, and tinged with just enough of the passage of time for this sort of reflection to really mean something.

And then there's the period footage — so much of it, so carefully and thoughtfully assembled. The most famous Beatlemania scenes mix seamlessly with the quieter and more private ones; the performances during the touring period look and sound as great as ever.

It's extraordinarily familiar territory, as well-trod as any moment of pop cultural history. And yet "The Beatles Anthology" still feels as fresh and as relevant as ever today in the way it presents the dizzying whirlwind of this sort of fame from the front lines.

BOTTOM LINE This is the definitive telling of The Beatles' story.