There are exactly four interesting things about the new Prime Video thing, Daisy Jones & the Six (out now), so I am just going to cut straight to it this week, if that’s all right with you:
1. As you will know because I saw every single one of you reading the book version of this in 2019, the story’s two whirring leads, Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), are both flawed and morally impure and, essentially, human. This is quite rare in 2023 – for some reason, there is a growing movement where people cannot watch films or TV (unless it’s high fantasy or set in space) where characters who aren’t explicitly coded as the villain do a single bad thing. People can’t get their heads round this, at all (“Sorry, Tony Soprano did what?”). So every time Billy or Daisy do something that can only be described as “rock’n’roll” – Drugs! Being mean in a recording session! Gratefully receiving a sex act in a van! – it feels, honestly, quite refreshing. Here are two horrible and annoying people, Daisy Jones & the Six says. Watch them crash against each other for a few years, making Art.
2. I am a natural-born hater and as such I’ve always found the performance of songs woven into works of fiction to be quite embarrassing. Obviously, Daisy Jones & the Six (which is based on a book that simply asks the question: “What if Fleetwood Mac … ?”) has to have songs in every episode. Daisy Jones has to find her voice singing bravely at a piano bar. The Six have to find their success by absolutely smashing a cock-rock riff on stage. The songs are the whole point, so they have to be in there. This should be a problem for me.
But Daisy Jones … has made me realise something, and that is: rock biopics are their own recurring genre. They are just as safe as same-beats-in-the-same-order superhero movies. The singer works in a cafe but always has something primally magical about them. There’s an astonished scene of discovery (“You really have some pipes!”), and a one-in-a-million chance meeting. A producer stares at the first recording session, agog through a glass screen. An adoring crowd, a visible glowup, five years have passed, someone has a traumatic accident in or near a bath. Drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle! Get offa me! Etc, etc, etc. It’s basically just about vibes, isn’t it. The entire rock biopic genre – and Daisy Jones & the Six especially – is just very vibey. You don’t need too much of a story when the drummer has a moustache and likes to stick his head out of the battered-up van they all pooled their savings to buy.
3. Daisy Jones … is presented as a mockumentary (this makes sense: the book is written like an oral history) and my main thing with this is: mockumentary is a great structure for comedy, but never quite works when the story plays it straight. Actors, real actors, saying “Is this thing on?” into a mic, while a fake-producer fake-asks them questions? No. Come on. Enough of this. Mockumentary can only be for jokes, now. That’s my new rule. This is the last one I’m letting slide.
4. This does not need to be a miniseries that is 10 hours long. This should have been a film, but no one makes films any more, because people don’t watch films any more unless there is a villain from space who can be easily understood as the bad guy, so every story that could have been a really cool good film is now being converted into a streaming series instead. I am going to be moaning about this all year, because it keeps happening in 2023: this does not need to be 10 hours long.
Crucially, stretching the structure out to make it last 10 hours leads to some bizarre storytelling decisions: one band member’s descent into drink and drugs (and back again, from an unseen rehab!) is told in about two half-scenes; Billy being a bit afraid to hold his daughter, or Daisy having a chat with her housemate, gets more than that. It takes five hours of TV before they are really even in a band together. These decisions are being made a lot, now, because everything has to be 10 hours long instead of just a good film. But Daisy Jones & the Six is a fun little party and if you can watch actors sing without cringing your body inside out, you’re probably going to like it a lot. But: please, please. Please stop making things 10 hours long!
