The film was first broadcast on 23 June 2010 on BBC Four,[2] and received its US premiere on PBS on 21 November 2010 as part of Masterpiece Contemporary,[3] airing the day before the American Masters documentary LennoNYC, which begins where Lennon Naked ended.

In 1964, a reluctant John Lennon is persuaded by manager Brian Epstein to meet his father Freddie, who abandoned him seventeen years earlier, with the press in attendance.

After meeting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles go on a meditation retreat with him, only to return to London shortly afterwards, where they hold a press conference to denounce him as a fraud.

The next morning, Lennon, in the midst of a drug trip and, remembering the public's reaction at his "more popular than Jesus" statement two years before, states that he can't walk on water after all.

Meanwhile, Derek is worried about Apple Records' financial situation and the impending release of the Beatles' eponymous double album.

After losing patience with McCartney, Lennon and Yoko leave the meeting and go to their house, and take a picture that will later become the cover of Two Virgins.

The credited cast consists of the following:[5] Naoko Mori has confessed that she got drunk to film all the nude scenes in this movie.

"[6] According to Sam Wollaston of The Guardian, the film's "continual looking back over the shoulder to childhood, to his mother and father, takes Lennon Naked beyond the merely biographical: it gives it a depth and a Freudian quality"; putting aside minor issues with Eccleston's accent and his age (the 46-year-old actor was playing a man who is in his 20s for most of the film), Wollaston called Eccleston's work "a brilliant performance, in a brilliant film, because what Eccleston does get spot-on is the spirit of Lennon, with all his complications, contradictions and demons.

"[7] Upon its US premiere Robert Lloyd, the television critic for the Los Angeles Times, wrote "it doesn't much hang together as a drama and will be of interest mainly to Beatle completists and Eccleston fans, of whom there are, after all, more than a few....none of the actors are given enough space to build a solid character, either – even the formidable Yoko comes off as a bit of a simp.

Minus any demonstration of his importance, and with Eccleston playing the pained, petulant John to the near exclusion of the talented, charming one, we are left just with a portrait of a rich and prickly young man.