Millie Small

Around the Beatles

Paul McCartney, John Lennon

The show opens on an image of the Globe Theatre, with Ringo Starr unfurling a flag with the legend "Around The Beatles". The studio setting is arranged as a theater in the round, (hence the show's name) echoing the seating arrangement of the Globe. The opening act is a humorous rendition of the "play within a play", Pyramus and Thisbe (Act V, Scene I) from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Paul McCartney as Pyramus, John Lennon as his lover Thisbe, George Harrison as Moonshine, and Starr as Lion.

Just for You

Vincent Scarza, Douglas Hickox

Peter and Gordon, Sam Costa

Sam Costa is a man about town, dispensing wisdom and witty quips from the bed of his Space Age bachelor bad whilst watching a stream of musical performances on his picture wall

The Rise and Fall of Nellie Brown

John Jacobs

Millie Small, Elisabeth Welch

A delightful Christmas musical about a young Jamaican woman who flees her humdrum Liverpool lodgings in search of her glamorous London cousin. Broadcast live on 28 December 1964, this rare TV musical is one of few to have survived from the 1960s. A tale of Afro-Caribbean immigration, the show is unusual for its time in that it doesn't labour the issues around racial tensions in Britain, but simply celebrates Christmas and family.