The Beatles are heading back to Hamburg, on screen at least.

A new six-part TV drama about the band’s formative years has started filming in Germany and Liverpool. Hamburg Days will follow the period when The Beatles played more than 250 gigs in the German port city between 1960 and 1962.

The drama is inspired by the memoirs of artist Klaus Voormann, who played bass on some Beatles records and designed the cover of the band’s Revolver album in 1966.

Produced and financed by British and German companies, Hamburg Days will also film in Merseyside and Munich. It will air on BBC One.

Producers said it will show the band, then made up of bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best as well as John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, meeting Voormann and photographer Astrid Kirchherr. They said that meeting sparked the group’s transformation from “a scrappy group of teenagers into the greatest music phenomenon the world has ever known”.

Kirchherr, who died in 2020 aged 81, has been credited with helping shape the band’s aesthetic style and famous mop top hairstyle.

She was also engaged to Sutcliffe, who left the band to take an arts course in Hamburg and died of a brain haemorrhage in 1962 at the age of 21.

Best has previously spoken of his shock at being fired by Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1962 and replaced by Ringo Starr.

The series has been written by Wirral-born Jamie Carragher, one of the writers behind HBO drama Succession. It will be directed by Christian Schwochow, who worked on The Crown, and Laura Lackmann.

The cast includes Rhys Mannion as John Lennon, Ellis Murphy as Paul McCartney, Harvey Brett as George Harrison, Louis Landau as Stuart Sutcliffe and Patrick Gilmore as Pete Best.

Luna Jordan will play Astrid Kirchherr, Laura Tonke will play her mother Nielsa, and Casper von Bülow will play Klaus Voormann.

The cast attended the launch of a Hamburg exhibition of the band’s letters on Saturday with Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram, who has been on a trade mission to the city.

A separate four-part film series about The Beatles is also being shot in Liverpool for release in 2028. It is being made by Skyfall director Sam Mendes.

Merseyside has recently hosted the most production shoots in the UK outside London, including the TV dramas This City is Ours, The Cage and Peaky Blinders.

Read more from BBC News.