Adapted from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling 2019 novel of the same name, “Daisy Jones & The Six” uses the tempestuous creative and personal dynamics within the band Fleetwood Mac to tell its own story of a ‘70s band that burned out instead of fading away. They were massive. Why did they break up so quickly? The series has a gorgeous cast of young talents, excellent period detail, and a rich source. But unfortunately, the show succumbs to the same problem as so many streaming series—sagging when it needs to narratively build momentum. Director James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) establishes a wonderful set for the band in the first few episodes, but the show feels too content to repeat itself, feeling more and more like a cover of a cover.
The first two episodes engender enough goodwill to carry the show through some later rough spots, and it should be said that the cast is uniformly excellent to make even the mistakes tolerable. “Daisy” is initially framed as a documentary made two decades after The Six played their final show. Everyone has been gathered for interviews to explain the band’s rise and fall for the first time since they went their separate ways after a sold-out show at Soldier Field. So the bulk of the drama plays out as a flashback, starting with introductions to Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), the Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham of this dynamic. The interviews establish the older versions of these characters and their bandmates as people with skeletons in their closets, and then the show reveals how they got buried.
The vibrant early episodes present young people on a collision course with creative destiny, two people tired of being underestimated by the people around them. They will be compared to “Almost Famous,” of course, but that’s not a criticism in that the show echoes that film’s joyous creative spirit at its best in these first chapters. As Billy gets his band together—guitarist brother Graham (Will Harrison), bassist Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse), drummer Warren Rojas (Sebastian Chacon), and keyboardist Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse)—while Daisy is being used by all of the men around her that don’t see her talent, there’s joy from the anticipation of their creative fusion. Ponsoldt and his team give these episodes a buoyancy, and Claflin and Keough really understand the “hungry artist” chapters best of all, making that blend of ambition and anxiety that often coalesces into creative genius. If anything, I wish the show spent more time before getting the title band together, letting The Six struggle in Pittsburgh and Daisy fight her way through the California music scene. It also would have helped define the other band members more before the focus becomes all about Daisy & Billy.
