SummaryThe rapid rise and the sudden demise of a 1970s Los Angles rock group led by Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) is at the center of this limited series based on the novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
SummaryThe rapid rise and the sudden demise of a 1970s Los Angles rock group led by Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) is at the center of this limited series based on the novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
The series perfectly captures the sometimes tedious, often stressful, occasionally magical process of songwriting, recording and performing, with Keough and Claflin handling their own vocals in impressive fashion. ... The series is an exhilarating slice of fictional but authentic 1970s rock ’n’ roll.
“Daisy Jones & the Six” doesn’t quite qualify as a dream come true, but it does turn its fictional story into a four-star soap, wistfully capturing this musical era broadly and the sometimes-fleeting nature of stardom.
As a TV series, it’s perfectly fine, in a paradoxically low-wattage, high-intensity way, though it does go on a little long and requires some willful suspension of disbelief.
With a better script, a looser concept and fewer episodes, Daisy Jones and The Six could have been something really special. In its worst moments, however, it’s a banal, thin love story without enough grit or cool laissez-faire to emulate what makes seventies rock bands so fascinating. Unlike many rockstars of the era, I’m glad there won’t be a reunion tour.
Sure, it’s serviceable as a decent binge for people who get off on reading about how much Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham hated each other, but at no point does it even come close to the heights reached by the original novel, ones that went past the simple shock value of overdoses and infidelity and whatever else the writers of the show could scrounge up.
If all viewers had to deal with was a sham documentary structure, they could probably get over it, but “Daisy Jones and the Six” utterly bungles its star-crossed romance, as well. ... The music isn’t bad, though. Their biggest hits (mainly “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb”) may not be stone-cold classics, but they’re believable substitutes in a series where little else is convincing — or even tries to be.