Riley Keough stars in ‘Daisy Jones’
A fictional tale unraveling a rock ‘n’ roll mystery, “Daisy Jones & the Six” takes itself terribly seriously. I’m glad somebody does.
Streaming on Prime Video, this series adaptation of the best-selling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls the rise and sudden fall of a legendary rock band from the point of view of a documentary made years after the fact.
Riley Keough stars in the title role as Daisy Jones, the lead singer and creative muse. Sam Claflin is Billy Dunne, first among equals in the Six, a brash, handsome and charismatic rocker who helped his little brother and his geeky Pittsburgh friends form a band that only got rolling once they added Daisy’s voice to the mix.
Clearly inspired by the tempestuous relationships between members of Fleetwood Mac when their album “Rumours” dominated the charts, “Daisy” begins with a 1977 concert in Chicago’s Soldier Field, a triumph that was to be their last gig. Members of the band are interviewed separately, some 20 years later, to determine just what the heck happened.
Along the way we discover their individual rock ‘n’ roll dreams. We first meet Daisy as a 6-yearold, sitting on the floor of her parents’ bedroom wearing headphones and singing like a 1920s blues belter. Her posh mother rushes into the room to tell Daisy that her warbling is disturbing their cocktail party and that she should pipe down.
While this scene is supposed to establish Daisy’s “poor little rich girl” bonafides, it reminded this cynical viewer of an early moment in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” when an untrained young Cox picks up a guitar and immediately begins growling like some delta blues artist. The difference is that “Walk Hard” is supposed to be ridiculous, but “Daisy” unfolds completely in earnest.
Perhaps an audience has emerged for this romanticized view of all that sex, drugs and hair from some 50 years back — an audience that didn’t grow up with “Walk Hard,” “Spinal Tap” and
“The Rutles,” films that saw rock’s excess as overripe for satire. Perhaps “Daisy” is aimed at the audience that sat through Baz Luhrmann’s overwrought “Elvis.” It stars Keough, after all, the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and the granddaughter of the King.
“Daisy” is executiveproduced by Reese Witherspoon, who also stars in and co-produced (with Jennifer Aniston) Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show.” Both series fail in the same weird way. They’re too ridiculous to take seriously as drama but aren’t quite embarrassing enough to be enjoyed as high camp.
› Streaming on PBS. org, the documentary “Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind” profiles the acclaimed poet, a 2002 National Book Award Winner and 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist and an artist who became known as a “poet’s poet” in a field long dominated by male voices.
› The dark
2022 comedy “Triangle of Sadness” streams on Hulu.