Part Three: Were the Beatles Just as Fake as the Monkees?

In last week’s installment, critics accused the Monkees of being a fake band assembled by show-business professionals, but failed to criticize the Beatles who had also been cleaned up by Brian Epstein, hyped by Capital Records, merchandised, and occasionally helped out by producer George Martin in the studio.

After the music, critics put down The Monkees series as a commercialized third-carbon copy of Richard Lester’s two Beatle films.

“Dick [Lester] didn’t invent the style,” director James Frawley told The London Times. “Look at the Marx Brothers.” Frawley insisted that the basic idea of a series following the adventures of a pop group was not very original from the start and once the formula had been agreed upon, the parts were cast as they would be for any series.