Short answers, pulled from the story.
It Was Twenty Years Ago Today premiered on the 1st of June 1987 on the ITV network in Britain, exactly twenty years after the official release date of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Its North American premiere followed on the 3rd of June 1987 on CBC, and PBS aired it in the United States on the 11th of November 1987.
John Sheppard directed and produced the film for Granada Television. His previous work included directing musical performances on the 1960s pop programme Ready Steady Go! and making segments for Granada's World in Action current affairs series.
Interviewees include George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, and Derek Taylor, who also served as a consultant on the production. Other participants include William Rees-Mogg, Barry Miles, Peter Fonda, Peter Coyote, Michelle Phillips, Roger McGuinn, Paul Kantner, and musicians and critics including William Mann and Wilfrid Mellers.
The documentary presents Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the central factor behind the events and scenes that led to the full emergence of the 1960s counterculture and the Summer of Love. This claim was disputed by some critics, including John Corry of The New York Times, who noted that McCartney and Harrison themselves claimed less credit than the film's framing implied.
Reviews were mixed. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post praised it as a thoughtful and expansive documentary that went beyond nostalgia. Jonathan Gross of the Toronto Star was sharply critical, calling its core argument about Sgt. Pepper's cultural causation tenuous. Abbie Hoffman called it "simply brilliant" and the only thing he would recommend about the 1960s.
The film presents the Summer of Love as centred on the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, with parallel movements in London, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris. Sociomusicologist Simon Frith is quoted describing 1967 as the year that "it all came together" for the 1960s youth movement's search for independence from societal norms.