Orange County Register

After a season filled spiffy remasters, the complete restoration of their work in mono and their arrival on Rock Band, the Year of the Fab Four appears to be coming to a close with one more peer into their past.

The Beatles on Record, a new full-length documentary chronicling the making of each of the band’s 13 albums, will make its stateside debut on Thanksgiving Eve, Nov. 25, at 10 p.m. on The History Channel. Directed by Bob Smeaton, who also helmed the eight-part Beatles Anthology in 1995, the special charts the extraordinary evolution and ahead-of-their-time innovations the quartet achieved from Please Please Me in 1962 to Abbey Road at the close of the decade.

All of it is narrated by John, Paul, George and Ringo, along with producer George Martin, and includes still more rare and unseen footage as well as never-before-heard in-studio banter … much like what comprises the mini-documentaries that come with each remastered album. Reports from the BBC airing of The Beatles on Record, in fact, indicate that the mini-docs are merely excerpts from this longer, more detailed work.

The film is slated for repeat screenings across A&E’s various networks.

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