IMAGINE... HARRY NILSSON: THE MISSING BEATLE, BBC FOUR, REVIEW

Alan Yentob Imagined singer Harry Nilsson Photo: BBC

Imagine… Harry Nilsson: the Missing Beatle (BBC One) was a sad story. Not only because of the singer’s alcoholism and early death, but because it seems to have been decided that the sole way to make viewers interested in his life was to tie it awkwardly to The Beatles. Contributors kept referring to Nilsson, who died aged 52 in 1994, as “a sort of Beatle”, or “the fifth Beatle”; “I felt Harry could be my Beatles.”

One even called him “the closest thing to an American version of The Beatles”. Certainly Nilsson was admired by The Beatles, and sometimes he got drunk with John Lennon, and maybe at a push you could say his singing voice sounded like a blend of Lennon’s and McCartney’s (though stronger and more stirring than either). But today most people probably remember him for just two songs (Without You and Everybody’s Talkin’), neither of which he wrote.

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