Daisy Jones & The Six is here but is it giving all the book vibes?

Let’s be honest. We were all (nervously) thinking it.

As with any ‘book to screen’ adaptation, there’s always that apprehension whether or not it will live up to the book. We’ve been burnt before — countless shows and film that doesn’t quite nail the essence of the book its characters. Or worse, completely reimagines it so that all the familiarity from the book is gone.

For a beloved book like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six, the stakes feel particularly high. It is after all a book that’s made even notorious non-book lovers fall in love (hello to my bestfriend Steph who has declared this as her favourite book EVER) since it was released in 2019. No wonder we are all being cautious about it. No one wants this adaptation to fail, especially given its cultural impact and how much it cemented Taylor Jenkins Reid as the writer of this generation giving us main character energy in how she writes complicated, wonderful women.

Daisy Jones & The Six had big shoes to fill from the get-go. Luckily Taylor Jenkins Reid serves as executive producer for this so it’s good to know that she had a hand in bringing to life on screen the world she had so wonderfully crafted in her books. But I didn’t know how they could possibly bring Daisy Jones to life on screen and Riley Keough’s casting is both the best and worst decision. On one hand, she seems like the perfect choice being the granddaughter of one of the most iconic musicians in the world (a nepo baby as TikTok would say) so she understands that world better than anyone else. On the otherhand, she doesn’t quite have that grit that Daisy Jones had in the book. By the time episode three rolled around, I was annoyed by how lackluster and whiny Daisy seemed to be. A far cry from the headstrong, complicated Daisy we have met in the book.

I felt the same with Camila Morrone as Camila Dunne. Camila was my favourite character in the book and the one I felt was truly the heart of this story but I felt like her portrayal in the series felt flat. Camila was instead lackluster and reduced to a love interest, a nuisance in the Daisy-Billy dynamic. She did have the best wardrobe in the series, I will say, and she looked the part the most, magically disappearing into that era.

While this show is a slow burn, the pay off is worth it. I could sit here and nitpick what they didn’t capture from the book, what key points were missed, but that would do the show a disservice as book chat aside, it is a great show with fabulous outfits, enough emotional hook (and longing stares from Sam Claflin who plays Billy Dunne), and nostalgia for a period in time most of us who have read the book could only imagine.

I also thought it was an interesting choice to have Patti Smith’s ‘Dancing Barefoot’ as the opener given that they released an album with songs specifically for the show called ‘Aurora’. I see why though — the songs on the album doesn’t quite have the familiarity even though it was clearly made with that era in mind (and lots of Fleetwood Mac vibes). Hearing the opening chords to ‘Dancing Barefoot’ was a delightful surprise! That and the opening scene going straight to the interview definitely set the tone for the series and tried to show us that they understood the book and will do it justice.

The first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six will be dropping at Prime Video at 1 pm NZT on March 3 with episodes being released in batches throughout the month. Watch the trailer here: