It would be wrong to go into The Beatles Anthology expecting another Get Back. Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary did such a miraculous job of recontextualising the glum old footage from Let It Be, by setting it against an ingenious ticking clock device and expanding it out to become a maximalist feelgood avalanche, that it felt like you were watching something entirely new.

But The Beatles Anthology is not new. If you saw the original series on television in 1995, or on YouTube at any point since, you’ll know what you’re in for. It is almost the exact same thing, only the images are sharper and the sound is better.

If you’re coming to it fresh, however, it remains utterly authoritative. Essentially, The World at War but about the band that made Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, The Beatles Anthology is a meticulously assembled collage of all available footage of the Beatles, interspersed with contemporary interviews that were apparently conducted over a long enough period to encompass a genuinely giddy array of facial hair (George Harrison), haircuts (Ringo Starr) and dye-jobs (Paul McCartney). John Lennon also gets to present his version of events, via extensive archive footage.

And even though a lot of the memories have become well worn – Paul McCartney has spent the past three decades repeating every anecdote here to the point of inanity – it really does put you in their shoes.

The updated audio, revamped by Giles Martin (son of George), using Jackson’s machine-learning technology, is also a thing of wonder. Over the years it has sometimes been hard to reconcile the reputation of the early Beatles as wild performers with the thin and tinny albums they made. But now their music absolutely thumps. In one performance in the second episode, you can literally hear the saliva crackle in the back of McCartney’s throat as he scream-sings a number. Songwriting aside, suddenly it’s clear why so many people fell for them so completely.

However, Get Back has cast a long shadow over the series. That documentary did a fantastic job of painting the Beatles as McCartney’s deathless endeavour to chivvy three grouchy bandmates into a state of productivity. Such a fantastic job, in fact, that it becomes impossible to ignore here.

This is especially true of the show’s ninth and final episode. This, the big draw of the reissue, promises an all-new look at the band’s Lennon-less reunion in the 1990s. Here is where they recorded Lennon’s Free as a Bird (1995) and Real Love (1996) as a group, all their past animosity put safely to bed. But that isn’t quite the case.

First, almost all the footage from the episode has been online for years, so the thrill of the new isn’t quite as pronounced as you would have hoped. And second, it’s refreshing to see what an incredible grump Harrison still was after all those years.

The episode mentions, for instance, that the original title of the series was going to be The Long and Winding Road, until Harrison put the kibosh on it for fear that naming their official history after a McCartney song would give him undue prominence. There’s a shot of the three of them playing Raunchy – the song that got Harrison invited into the band – and you can see him slightly grimace whenever McCartney starts showboating for the cameras.

And don’t forget that it was Harrison who stopped the band from remaking Now and Then, on the basis that – in a McCartney retelling from before the song was eventually released – it was “fucking rubbish”. In fact, the highlight of the entire series might be a clip of the three of them sitting with George Martin, listening to the medley from the end of Abbey Road. And, as three-quarters of the group focus intently on what by any measure has to count as one of pop music’s all-time high points, Harrison wrinkles his nose and mutters, “bit cheesy.”

None of this is intentional, surely (just as the moment where, during their final ever performance as a trio, Ringo sighs and checks his watch before realising that he’s being filmed), but it does serve as a small counter to the image of the Beatles as an untouchable cultural monument. You’re left with the sense that they were just four people, complicated and narky and human. The series tries to tell us this from the start – the opening titles are literally a shot of the four members shrinking until they’re completely obscured by the skyscraper-sized legend “THE BEATLES” – but it feels like a very necessary reminder nonetheless.

• The Beatles Anthology is on Disney+ now.