'The Beatles: Get Back' is spellbinding, but is it a TV show?

At this point, everyone is always being filmed and photographed all the time, in a way, since we’re armed with phones and surrounded by surveillance cameras. But to get that sense of real time with people from way back when, well it’s remarkable. I wish we had that kind of intimate and vivid photographic and video coverage of people from 200 years ago.

“Get Back” also has a place in the genesis of reality TV. It’s an early attempt to impose an artificial narrative onto real people. The Beatles have been gathered together to create a live performance with new songs in a limited amount of time. They’re thrown together with their wits and talents, given a deadline, and filmed constantly — which is the blueprint for so many of the reality contests that have been all over TV for the past 20 years.

Source: Yvonne Abraham/bostonglobe.com

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