New documentary to revisit the week John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted ‘The Mike Douglas Show’

A new documentary is set to revisit the one week in 1972 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show. 

Titled Daytime Revolution, the documentary was authorised by Ono and Lennon’s son, Sean, and will include archival footage from each of the five episodes co-hosted by the famous couple in 1972. Daytime Revolution was directed by Erik Nelson, and will feature interviews with surviving guests who were interviewed by Lennon and Ono on The Mike Douglas Show, as well as behind-the-scenes stories of the pair’s week-long stint.

According to Variety, production has wrapped on Daytime Revolution, with its producers currently seeking a distributor.

Across their five-episode run on The Mike Douglas Show, Lennon and Ono discussed then-controversial topics like environmental conservation and police brutality, and interviewed activists like Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale, and lecturer and attorney Ralph Nader.

Speaking of Daytime Revolution, Nelson said: “It’s become a cliche that Woodstock was the defining moment of the counterculture, [but] when I watched these broadcasts in their entirety, I realized that, in reality, this week in 1972, when Lennon and Ono essentially hijacked the airwaves and presented the best minds and dreams of their generation to the widest possible mass audience… was as far as the counterculture would ever get.”

A release date for Daytime Revolution has not yet been announced. It will follow a string of Lennon-focussed documentaries to be released in recent years, including Lennon’s Last Weekend in 2020 and the re-release of 24 Hours: The World Of John And Yoko in 2021.

Lennon was also the subject – alongside his Beatles bandmates – of the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which his son Julian Lennon said “made me love my father again”.