Daisy Jones and the Six (2023)
Daisy Jones and the Six is a highly anticipated series, and its main draws, besides the fact that it stars Riley Keough, are the music and the major nineteen-seventies nostalgia hits. Its essential story, as others have pointed out, bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Fleetwood Mac. Its basic structure is that of a biopic, or more precisely, a mockumentary, with the drama situated around interviews with the band members. Six is watchable, very much so, but it also feels like ticking boxes.
Daisy Jones lives and breathes music from the time she’s a small child. She writes, she sings, and she listens. Her mother is embarrassed by this and tries to shoot her down however she can. As soon as Daisy’s old enough, she strikes out on her own, determined to make it in the music business on her terms.
Meanwhile, the Dunning Brothers play wherever they can. Clubs, wedding receptions, parties, whatever. Older brother Billy is the life force behind the group, since he’s the best musician of the bunch. Their lives haven’t been easy, either—their dad skipped out on them when the boys were kids, and when Billy spies his dad at a wedding reception he lunges at him, chews him out, and shatters the guitar his dad gave him.
Both Daisy and the Dunning Brothers head for Los Angeles because they’ve heard that’s where the action is. They both encounter a Quincy Jones-esque producer named Teddy, who is determined to help these artists mature in their craft, and it all plays out in a familiar fashion. Of course, the real magic doesn’t happen until these two forces come together.
The series gets the look of the seventies exactly right, with macrame, shag carpeting, and orange, avocado and gold everything everywhere. The clothes are also just in period, even to Daisy going bra-less, which is one seventies trend I definitely don’t miss.
Problem is, a lot of the nighttime indoor scenes look dark and muddy to the point that it’s hard to see anything, such as when Daisy cooks a meal one night with only the stove light on. It’s as if they filmed these scenes in caves. I get that the characters might have been trying to save money, but the usual thing in the seventies was to use lower-watt bulbs, not huddle around a lamp or two. It’s a real shame because the sets look terrific.
Other than that, Daisy Jones and the Six is predictable fun. Older Billy sums the whole deal up himself at the end of the second episode: “Same old tired rock and roll tale. The drinking, the drugs, the loneliness.”
The unseen interviewer answers him off-camera, “Yeah, but that’s usually the end of the story. For you, it’s just the beginning.”
Danged right. So far we’ve had the unsympathetic relatives, the drugs, the drinking, the F-bombs falling like rain, and there’s a scene when Billy’s pregnant wife, Camila finds Billy in flagrante with two random girls. The preview for the fourth episode includes the obligatory “We’re on the radio!” yell. It may only be a matter of time before someone pulls a sink out of a wall, but I really hope things get more creative than that.
Daisy Jones and the Six is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rated 16+
My grade (so far): B-
Principal cast: Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Camila Morrone, Suki Waterhouse, Will Harrison, Josh Whitehouse, Sebastian Chacon, Nabiyah Be, Tom Wright, Timothy Olyphant,
Directed by James Ponsoldt, Nzingha Stewart, and Will Graham.
Written by Will Graham, Scott Neustadter. Taylor Jenkins Reid, Michael H. Weber, Susan Coyne, Elizabeth Cole, Jenny Klein, Harris Danow, Judalina Neira, Charmaine De Grate, Nora Kirkpatrick, and Taylor Jenkins Reid (novel)