The Midas Man

Netflix | ★★★✩✩

Reviewed by John Nathan

Today it is difficult to believe that the Beatles may never have been discovered had it not been for the son of a Jewish furniture shopkeeper in Liverpool. But this sympathetic biopic about Brian Epstein persuasively makes that case as it focuses on the stamina and chutzpah the self-styled manager summoned to get the Fab Four their first record deal.

The rejections up to that point had been many and, in the case of Decca, delivered with humiliation as the music industry’s establishment of the day failed to spot the talent that to Epstein was as obvious as the rising sun.

With the young svengali played with charm and vulnerability by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, this portrait written by Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham rehabilitates the manager’s reputation and dismisses any lingering accusations that Epstein exploited the Fab Four. With his 24-carat public-school accent and highly conservative parents, Fortune-Lloyd’s Epstein cuts an incongruous figure in scenes – some shot in a synagogue. This is especially apparent in the exchanges with his emotionally distant father Harry, played by Eddie Marsan, who presents him as a hard-nosed patriarch in contrast to the loving figure he conjured up as Amy Winehouse’s dad Mitch in another recent biopic, Back to Black.

There is yet more star wattage in the cameos. Eddie Suzy Izzard plays a seedy Alan Williams, who first managed the fledgling group. According to this account he was glad to be shot of them. And when Epstein is trying to break America in New York, none other than Jay Leno pops up as the legendary TV talk-show host Ed Sullivan.

In a memorable scene Epstein implores Sullivan to give his charges his show’s coveted headline slot while attempting to eat his beefburger with a knife and fork. It was to be a defining moment in the band’s mercurial rise.

Directed by Joe Stephenson, the film is pleasingly furnished in a 1960s period style and is anchored by Fortune-Lloyd’s moving portrait of a gay man tragically compromised by his homosexuality, which was then, of course, still illegal in the UK. Yet the further into the story we get, the less dramatic it becomes. An early scene in which Epstein discovers the band while they play a lunchtime gig in The Cavern is spine-tingling.

But other than the episode in which Epstein fires original drummer Pete Best at producer George Martin’s behest, and another where the contrary Lennon (Jonah Lees) fleetingly has a go at his kindly but driven manager, there is little conflict to chew on later on.

That the band’s original music is absent in the film because of rights issues is less a problem than the fact that they are largely an anodyne presence. Yes, this is film about their manager and not them. But ten years ago the play Epstein: The Man who Made the Beatles offered far more drama, depicting George (played in Midas Man by Leo Harvey-Elledge), the most spiritual member of the group, as the one most likely to give Epstein grief over money; Paul as a somewhat calculating figure and John as a loudmouth prone to dishing out the odd antisemitic jibe.

Whatever the truth, this portrayal could have done with more such complexities, and perhaps needed a series format to pull that off.