Adolescence star cast in Hamburg Days Beatles series
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- Christine Tremarco, Jonny Lee Miller, and Asa Butterfield have joined the cast of "Hamburg Days," a six-part BBC drama charting The Beatles' early years in Hamburg and their rise from Liverpool teenagers to the world's biggest band.
- Tremarco (49, a Bafta winner for Adolescence) will play John Lennon's aunt Mimi Smith; Butterfield (29, Sex Education) will portray manager Brian Epstein; and Miller (53, Trainspotting) will play Paul McCartney's father Jim.
- Production began in May in Germany and Liverpool — Hamburg is where The Beatles played more than 250 gigs between 1960 and 1962, the formative period the series dramatizes.
- The drama is inspired by the memoirs of Klaus Voormann, who met the band in Hamburg as a young artist and later designed the Revolver album cover in 1966 before playing on Lennon, Starr, and Harrison's solo records.
- Jamie Carragher, a Succession writer, has scripted the series; Christian Schwochow (The Crown) directs, and Bafta-winner David Holmes (Killing Eve) curates the music.
- Four Sam Mendes-directed Beatles films are also in the pipeline, starring Paul Mescal as McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo, Harris Dickinson as Lennon, and Joseph Quinn as Harrison — making this the second major Beatles project ramping up simultaneously.
Why it matters: Hamburg Days lands BBC a prestige Beatles drama to complement four Sam Mendes-directed Beatles films already in production — turning 2025-2026 into an unusually crowded moment for big-budget Beatles content. The casting of three recognisable TV leads in the Lennon family orbit gives the series commercial hooks beyond music fans.
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