TV Reviews : The ‘60s Rock Again on ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’

The ‘60s that Paul McCartney groped to evoke in his L.A. concerts this week come swinging in all their glory into cable-ready living rooms on Sunday at 9 p.m. when the Disney Channel begins airing “Ready, Steady, Go!”

The legendary 1963-67 English TV series showcased pop acts both essential and ephemeral, juxtaposed variety-show inanity with rock ‘n’ roll hipness, and preserves in kinescope aspic the white lipstick and Peter Pan collars, the bubbles, flips and bouffants, the Mary Quant makeup, Nehru shirts, Cuban heels and fringed dresses.

Not to mention Dusty Springfield, Brian Jones, Billy Fury. If you see this and don’t comprehend why the ‘60s are still cool in the ‘80s, you never will. Even the show’s slogan, “The weekend starts here,” has a contemporary ring.

The initial episode starts with the Beatles’ lip-syncing “It Won’t Be Long” and also features Fury, Springfield, the Hollies, Georgie Fame (a hot live performance of “Yeh Yeh” with his jazzy-bluesy Blue Flames), American bluesman Rufus Thomas, Martha & the Vandellas, the Rolling Stones (they looked like babies in ‘64) and the Dave Clark Five (Clark, a better businessman than musician, bought the rights to the shows and is hosting the presentation).

But the 1964 show belongs to John Lennon, who’s clearly chafing under the show-biz conventions and preparing to unleash the caustic character he’d become. He’s less interested in miming to the lyrics than in making lascivious faces at the audience and, in an interview designed to plug his book, he starts giving host Keith Fordyce a hard time.

“Come off it,” Fordyce says cooly after one nonsense answer from the author. Later, he asks, “Is this another form of expression for you?” Lennon replies brusquely, “No, I don’t express nothin’ in the writing. I just do it for fun.” It’s pretty merciless in the context of a bubbly pop show, prefiguring a coming end of the innocence.

The second show (airing Dec. 10) is almost too rich to digest: a 1965 Motown special with Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas, the Temptations, the Miracles and Marvin Gaye. Dusty Springfield emcees and teams with Martha & the Vandellas on her hit “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” a performance full of spontaneous, girlish rapport. There’s less of that when she joins Diana Ross & the Supremes. Everybody gets together at the end for “Mickey’s Monkey.”

The Dec. 17 show is composed of a 1965 Rolling Stones set that is sparked by a rowdy audience and a mix of the band’s early, R&B-style; tunes with “Under My Thumb,” “Paint It Black” and “Satisfaction.” Plus a goofy segment of miming to Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” that rock ‘n’ roll’s bad boys must have regretted tremendously the next day.

The package consists of four “specials” and 11 regular half-hour episodes. In all three previewed shows, production values and sound quality vary wildly. Some songs are performed live, some are mimed, some songs are completed, some aren’t. Segments are disconcertingly mismatched, transitions aren’t explained. But it doesn’t matter.