"Get Back" was a BBC sitcom which is sure to show up on American television as soon as some Yank programming executive cottons onto the fact that Kate Winslet co-starred in this show when she was only 17. "Get Back" originally aired from October 1992 to December '93, and every episode of this programme contains references to Lennon-McCartney songs. This should tell you that the series was created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who also inserted a running Lennon-McCartney fetish into their next series, "Goodnight Sweetheart", which premiered only three days after the last episode of "Get Back" aired.
Martin and Loretta Sweet (spot the Beatles reference?) are Labour voters who live with their two teenage daughters in a dodgy council house in a neighbourhood which shall remain nameless, but which is clearly based on Finsbury Park, north London. Kate Winslet plays their daughter Eleanor (as in Rigby, geddit?). The girls' uncle Albert (geddit?) is a wealthy Conservative who lives in luxury and sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher while doing nothing to help his poor relations. (The political metaphor is painfully obvious.) Shirley Stelfox (the original Rose from "Keeping Up Appearances") played a sexy blonde named Lucy (as in the sky with diamonds, geddit?). Despite having all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, "Get Back" is still fairly funny ... although not nearly so funny (nor so original) as Marks and Gran's next project, the time-travel sitcom "Goodnight Sweetheart".
"Get Back" lasted for 15 episodes. Not only the programme's title, but every episode's title is also the name of a Lennon-McCartney song ... such as "We Can Work It Out", "She's Leaving Home" and of course "Help!" One episode is titled "I Don't Want to See You Again", which was also the name of a song written by Paul McCartney (co-credited to Lennon) for Peter and Gordon.
