The Beatles: Story of their early years starts filming in Germany

A major new TV drama about the formative years of The Beatles has started production in Germany and Liverpool.  Hamburg Days will chart the band's early era when they performed more than 250 gigs in the German port city between 1960 and 1962.

It has been inspired by the memoirs of artist Klaus Voormann, who played bass on some Beatles records and designed the cover of their Revolver Album in 1966. Produced and financed by both British and German companies, Hamburg Days will also film in Merseyside and Munich. The six-part drama will be shown on BBC One.

Producers say it will show the band – which at the time included bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best – meeting Voorman and photographer Astrid Kirchherr, sparking the group's transformation from "a scrappy group of teenagers into the greatest music phenomenon the world has ever known".

Kirchherr, who died at the age of 81 in 2020, has been credited with helping develop the band's aesthetic style and famous mop top hairstyle.  She was also engaged to Sutcliffe, who left the band to do an arts course in Hamburg but died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 21 in 1962.

Source: bbc.com/Rumeana Jahangir