Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & the Six review – not even Elvis’s grandkid can save this 70s rock’n’roll saga

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a beautifully controlled depiction of the exuberant rise and chaotic fall of a 1970s band – fictional but very reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac. It captured the glamour, hedonism, freedom, joy of unleashing talent, and agony of addiction, all while building an acute psychological portrait of each character and, more impressively, the cross-currents between them all. Love, resentment, creative and sexual tension, insecurities, and monstrous egos collide, rebound, and send shockwaves back into and beyond the group, compounding their mistakes but also creating the alchemy that produces great music.

It’s a book made for television, right down to the structure, as the members of the band are being interviewed for a documentary 20 years after they split up, and Reese Witherspoon bought the rights. The result is a gleaming 10-part Prime Video adaptation written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber and directed by James Ponsoldt. They’ve kept the style and glamour – everyone and everything in it looks stunning – but they’ve failed to replicate Jenkins Reid’s great feat of making you care about this group of talented, fortunate people who couldn’t keep themselves together long enough to succeed, and who harmed an awful lot of people in the process.

It’s a tale of rags-to-riches-to-slightly-less-raggy-rags. Four childhood friends in Pittsburgh form a band in the hopes of escaping their hometown, including brothers Billy (Sam Claflin) and Graham Dunne (Will Harrison). They make it to LA and are on the verge of stardom with the addition of Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse), poached from another band, and an unrequited love interest for Graham when Billy’s addictions overcome him and he enters rehab. Teddy Price (Tom Wright), their manager, places them with his new discovery, Daisy Jones (Riley Keough), a beautiful, charismatic singer-songwriter with a slightly effortfully fiery spirit and anachronistic feminist awareness when he gets out (present in the book but bumped up here). The chemistry she shares with frontman and co-lyricist Billy is enough to keep her going.

The first two episodes are entertaining, as we follow the band as they pay their dues in seedy clubs while Daisy honed her craft, befriended “disco pioneer” Simone Jackson (Nabiyah Be), and learned how treacherous the business can be. She has had songs stolen from her after playing them in private to unscrupulous boyfriends, and she is expected to aim no higher than being a muse to men.

Daisy Jones & the Six never fully comes to life, despite the fact that the series gains weight after Billy leaves rehab and torque after Daisy arrives. Everything is a little too slick and sanitary. Perhaps such endeavors are always doomed by the impossibility of putting together a fully credible Fleetwood Mac-style band for television. What can be evoked on paper is a much more difficult proposition on screen. The Six’s songs were created through collaborations with Grammy award-winning producer Blake Mills and musicians including Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, and Jackson Browne. The charismatic and talented Keough (who also trails clouds of fascination for the viewer by being the granddaughter of Elvis Presley) and Claflin have put in months of work with vocal coaches.

It’s still entertaining, especially if you have a high tolerance for artistic egomania. I happily watched until the end, but it is the book that I will read again.