‘Daisy Jones and The Six’ disappoints viewers

Hadley Hoskins
Junior Editor

daisy jones and the six graphic — “Daisy Jones and The Six” was released on Amazon Prime Video beginning on March 3. Photo from Prime Video

Limited series “Daisy Jones and The Six” by Prime Video released its final two episodes on March 24.

The show is based on the national bestselling book “Daisy Jones and the Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid. While fans of the book had high expectations for the series, some said the adaptation didn’t live up to their hopes.

“Daisy Jones and the Six” follows Riley Keough (“The Girlfriend Experience”) as singer-songwriter Daisy Jones as she joins the fictional 70s rock band Daisy Jones & The Six. The band produces one of the supposedly best albums ever, experiences overnight fame– and consecutively, a dramatic fallout.

The cast features Sam Claflin (“The Hunger Games”) as Billy Dunne, the lead singer of the band, Suki Waterhouse (“Persuasion”) as keyboardist Karen Sirko, Josh Whitehouse (“The Knight Before Christmas”) as bassist Eddie Roundtree and Sebastian Chacon (“Emergency”) as drummer Warren Rojas.

The book was published in 2019, and like the show, presents itself as the nonfiction story of a world-famous 70s rock band. It portrays the fame of Daisy Jones & The Six as comparable to bands like The Beatles or Fleetwood Mac, leaving viewers with high expectations for the show to accurately represent one of the supposedly best bands and musicians of the 20th century.

The show is filmed in documentary format, flashing between interviews with members of the band and their close friends and family, and footage from the rise of the band 20 years prior. It presents the characters, songs, and events as if they really happened– and as if Daisy Jones & The Six were a real band.

“I think it’s confusing for people who haven’t read the book who might think that it is like an actual real band, but for people who read the book, it makes sense to keep it in that style, because it’s like them looking back on their story,” junior Lily Naert said.

The fictional album Daisy Jones and The Six produced in the show. “Aurora,” was released on March 2, the day before the release of the first three episodes. Written by Marcus Mumford and Phoebe Bridgers, the song’s credits even say “performed by Daisy Jones & The Six,” aiding in its appearance of it being a real album.

Listeners said that while the album is good, it didn’t live up to their expectations.

“I think the music is good… but it’s described as one of the best albums ever, and so it’s kind of hard to recreate that,” Naert said.

This isn’t the only part of the show that falls flat. The show also struggles to keep up with the pace of the book. The book manages to follow the characters through complicated arcs and story lines, but the show glosses over major plot points from the book and focuses too much on other parts.

For example, the book dedicates a significant amount of effort and time to lead singer Billy Dunne’s struggles with addiction. Naert said she felt like the show did not do this.

“There was, maybe like, five minutes about that, and then they were like ‘okay, next thing,’” Naert said.
Another reason the book was so enthralling was the way it shows human error and portrays the unreliable narration of the characters by presenting conflicting accounts of what happened.

While the show attempts this, its efforts do not succeed for the most part due to the filming style– there is only one account for everything, and viewers are left to assume that what they saw was the truth, compared to the book, where they know that certain characters see situations differently.

Despite this, some parts of the show, such as the costumes, shine through. The costumes are designed by Denise Wingate and accurately portray the characters personalities and storylines while staying true to the timeline. For example, lead singer Daisy Jones starts off the series in muted tones and more natural fabrics, but as the storyline progresses, her outfits become more colorful and flowy, taking on big fabrics and capes as she rises to fame.

Overall, though, “Daisy Jones and the Six” fails to live up to the drama of the book. The layers and complicated storylines of the book don’t translate well to the screen, leaving viewers conflicted and confused about the true story of the band, despite the best efforts of the writers, designers and cast.