Chris Connor reviews Prime Video’s Daisy Jones & The Six…
Daisy Jones & The Six proved a huge success for author Taylor Jenkins Reid in 2019, depicting a fictional 1970s rock group in their heyday as they embarked on a sold out stadium tour off the back of a huge record to suddenly breakup and never be heard from again. The book was inspired loosely by the story of Fleetwood Mac and now finds itself adapted into a major ten-part TV series from Prime Video, led by Sam Claflin as The Six’s frontman and songwriter Billy Dunne and Riley Keough as Daisy Jones.
The series wonderfully captures what made the original novel so successful, full of energy and a loving tribute to the music of the 1970s and wider culture with some fantastic outfits being worn by all involved and everyone clearly having an absolute blast.
Keough is perfectly cast as Daisy a bundle of pent up energy waiting to explode on stage, she captures her shift from shy to larger than life and the toll that fame and her lifestyle takes on her. Claflin might seem an unusual choice for Billy Dunne but he captures his physicality and sells himself as a frontman with his back permanently to the wall.
Camilla Morrone is a breath of fresh air as Billy’s wife Camilla, trying to keep him grounded and start a family while the group becomes one of the biggest on the planet, while Suki Waterhouse as keyboardist Karen Sirko brings a sense of warmth and togetherness. The one drawback among the cast is a smaller than expected role for Timothy Olyphant’s Rod Reyes, a key figure in the band but here kept to the sidelines for the most part.
The show shifts the narrative structure from the book slightly, still using interviews taking place after the event but with these more bookending each episode as the bulk of the action takes place in the 1970s. Beyond the fantastic tunes of The Six themselves we get a host of 70s tunes, well known and more deep-cuts from the likes of Toto, The Rolling Stones, Earth Wind & Fire, Billy Preston and Carole King among many others.
There is more than a hint of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous which focused on the same era and a similar style of fictional band but the show avoids falling into pastiche to stand well on its own two feet.
The music of the group, is one of the key elements to make the show work and it is to its credit that it works so convincingly, with a full album to be released to accompany the show’s release, performed by the show’s band with the involvement of musicians like Phoebe Bridgers. The songs perfectly feel fitting for a band as big as the one in the show, with the concert sequences believable and exhilarating.
Daisy Jones & The Six brings Taylor Jenkins Reid’s work to life in barnstorming fashion with a cast more than up the task of capturing the fictional rock icons. The music works wonderfully, interspersed with some of the most recognisable and iconic music of the era. In spite of being ten episodes the show never outstays its welcome and is true to the spirit of what made the book such a success while proving irresistible in its own right. It’s a warts and all rock n roll saga that will have fans of the book and the music of the era in their element.
Chris Connor
