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It was 20 years ago today that citizens of Berlin tore down the Berlin Wall, marking a symbolic end to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West.

PBS marks the occasion with “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin” (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings).

Filmmaker Leslie Woodhouse happens to have captured early footage of the Beatles at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1962 and then went on to make films in the Soviet Union.

While there, he encountered countless citizens who related the exhilarating appeal of the Beatles during the 1960s and 1970s. As one man puts it, when Beatlemania hit, the Soviet Union was just like any other European nation.

Only it wasn’t. A rigidly controlled Communist state media blasted the Beatles and rock music as Western bourgeois pollution. Official disapproval only made them more popular.

“Kremlin” is filled with great footage, including odd Soviet anti-Beatles documentaries and clips of Soviet youth forced to get haircuts by local officials.

Survivors of the era recall a black market in flexible plastic records fashioned out of used X-ray film. One man tells how he built his own guitar and then vandalized phone booths to create an electronic pick-up, and fashioned an amplifier using official Soviet propaganda megaphones.

Forced underground, fandom took on quasi-religious fervor. Rumors spread of sightings of John Lennon on certain Moscow streets. Countless Soviet students subscribed to a rumor of the band landing to refuel at a Soviet air force base and performing an impromptu concert on the wing of their plane.

One man theorizes that the Beatles arrived just as the Brezhnev leadership was beginning to seem geriatric and out of touch.

Forced to choose between stale Marxist-Leninism and Lennon and McCartney songs, Soviet youths let their hair grow long. One man, now a close adviser to Vladimir Putin, recalls how much the music mattered to him, and sings from “A Day in the Life.”

“Kremlin” focuses solely on the Beatles and doesn’t mention the influence of other bands, like the Velvet Underground, who inspired Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution.”

But it remains an important little film, a reminder that the Cold War was also a culture war, even if we in the West didn’t know it at the time.

• “BBC World News America” (6 p.m., BBC America) will also commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall with reports from that city’s Brandenburg Gate.

• The “CSI” franchise begins a three-way crossover story with Dr. Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne), following a case to “CSI: Miami” (9 p.m., CBS).

• “Lopez Tonight” (10 p.m., TBS) joins the talk show ranks. George Lopez welcomes Ellen DeGeneres, Eva Longoria Parker and Kobe Bryant as his first guests.

• Speaking of first guests, Bill Murray appears on “Late Show with David Letterman” (10:35 p.m., CBS). He was Letterman’s very first guest when his NBC show debuted Feb. 1, 1982.

Tonight’s other highlights

• Claire studies the sorority attacks on “Heroes” (7 p.m., NBC).

• A new patient can’t trust her own memories on “House” (7 p.m., Fox).

• Denver hosts Pittsburgh on “Monday Night Football” (7:30 p.m., ESPN).

• Rumors of a mole spread on “Lie to Me” (8 p.m., Fox).

• Sheldon plays peacemaker on “The Big Bang Theory” (8:30 p.m., CBS).