REVIEW: ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Fails To Make Us Care

Based on the novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid and partially inspired by her growing up watching the exploits of Fleetwood Mac, Daisy Jones & The Six, while engaging, has a structural problem too shaky to ignore. Created by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the latest Prime Video series fails to convince that these characters are worth rooting for, and the VH1 Behind the Music style implemented right from the start makes the task of making us care all the more difficult.

It occurs enough for viewers to accept the tactic – however frustrating – but each time it grinds the momentum of the story to a halt. It’s a missed moment for the writers, where the narrative would have fared better had it simply been told in either linear form or, even fragmented, to demonstrate how everyone was an unreliable narrator at this point in their lives, but without the asides. 

By choosing the structure they did it limits the emotional impact of the story for those who didn’t read the book both because we have a vague idea where we’re headed based on who is and isn’t giving testimonials but also because so much of the script end up reliant on the audience being told how good the music was, how crazy the rate of their fame rose, and how much they all loved each other. We needed to see this, rather than just be told, because by the end we’ve been sold a story that is never fully delivered on. 

The series follows the fictional band, Daisy Jones & The Six, as they scale the wall of success and stardom from struggling musicians to global rockstars. The story works through their beginning and makes its way to their end, announced at the start of the show when we’re told that after a sold out show at Chicago’s Soldier Field, they never played together again. The series tells us why. 

Riley Keough stars as the titular Daisy Jones while Sam Claflin plays co-lead as Billy Dune, the frontman of the fictional band The Six. It’s their story and how their past, present, and future weave with one another that is the pulse behind the story, even if they’re hardly the most likable characters. 

From the start, Daisy Jones & The Six delivers pulsating tension, be it between brothers, band members, record labels, or even lovers. A quick fix of one guitarist filling in for a missing bassist spills over into the entire series as the character in question suffers from an inferiority complex which boils over into believing he’s made for better than his lot. 

These threads and whispers of potential self-implosions drive most of the series. The band – usually Daisy and Billy – fight, they create amazing music together, gain more fans, stumble and self-destruct again, rinse and repeat. 

This may be true to this hedonistic rockstar lifestyle but it alone doesn’t make for engaging television, especially when it’s dragged throughout ten episodes when it easily could’ve been condensed to eight. The finest moments are when Daisy and Billy share the screen, and Keough and Claflin share an unmissable chemistry, and it takes over three episodes to get to that point. 

Part of this is because the other characters are given so little to do that they barely register as actualized characters, despite performers putting in committed work. Camila Morrone as Camila Dunne, Billy’s wife, and Suki Waterhouse as keyboardist Karen fare best, in part because they’re two of the more likable characters of the series, Morrone, in particular, possessing a wise beyond-her-years warmth that is the closest the series comes to convincing us that this ragtag group of musicians consider themselves a family. 

Nabiyah Be as Simone, a disco pioneer, and Daisy’s best friend might’ve been more memorable had the story managed to remember her beyond fits and starts. Episodes that should center on her are distracted by Daisy’s antics. There needed to be a great application of the balance of stories. This is especially true when it came to the other male band members who end up blending into the background, mere session players when they were meant to be embodying people on the cusp of greatness. 

Keough certainly looks the part and Claflin manages to embody Billy’s emotional demons and addictions that haunt him as well as possessing the physicality of a 70s rockstar, but they aren’t enough to make this riveting, must-watch television. 

Beyond a sluggish pace that kicks the show off, and too unlikable or forgettable characters, the greatest hindrance of the series is that there’s no palpable joy regarding the music they’re meant to be highlighting, even if the band at its center is fictional. One of the reasons why films about music can work so well and be so endlessly captivating is because it taps into the thrill of seeing something you love explored onscreen in a way that both deconstructs the myth while managing a celebratory tone. The creation of art and shared passion to do so is electrifying, so why is all of Daisy Jones & The Six so muted? 

If there are layers to this story that interest you, pieces like the 70s-set drama of an on-the-road band on the eve of their big break, then maybe watch Almost Famous instead. There’s no denying the love of the craft there. In Daisy Jones & The Six there’s too much that reads as cold to ever be caught up in the magic of music. 

Daisy Jones & The Six is out now on Amazon Prime.