Daisy Jones & The Six

“Daisy Jones” features exceptional performances throughout, but there are a few standouts — a never-been-better Claflin, a mercurial Keough and an entrancing Morrone. It all makes for one Amazon Prime’s best series yet. But heed these words of advice: Episode 10 will wreck you when it drops that mic.

The way Daisy Jones & The Six explores the price of fame, the price of dreams, and the price of artistry is really captivating, and showcases the true cost better than most real biopics manage to.

Olyphant's costume-rack theatricality signposts Daisy Jones' excessive charm. The 10-part miniseries starts absurd, turns sneakily profound, and lands in schmaltz so soapy I had to wipe tears from my eyes.

The ensemble clearly had lots of fun together, which translates to a delightful viewing experience. And the ’70s-era costumes and set design draw the audience into its world of sex, drugs, and, yes, rock ’n’ roll. Most especially, the love story at the center is compelling enough that viewers won’t want to miss a moment of its highs and lows. Much like its titular fictional band, Daisy Jones & The Six is destined to be a crowd-pleaser.

Sometimes there’s absolutely nothing wrong in playing the classics, and what the TV series lacks in ambition or originality, it more than makes up for in sheer dramatic heft, showstopping original songs, and an ensemble cast that’s virtually note-perfect across the board.

“Daisy Jones & the Six” doesn’t quite qualify as a dream come true, but it does turn its fictional story into a four-star soap, wistfully capturing this musical era broadly and the sometimes-fleeting nature of stardom.

While the series may be criticized for a certain rose-colored approach to rock’s manipulation, selfishness and self-destruction, its fundamental good humor is quite compelling. Imperfect and fault-ridden like the people it depicts, “Daisy Jones & the Six” has a hard-earned forgiving heart that may leave you a blubbering mess.

Amazon’s Daisy Jones & the Six is hampered by rock star clichés, but it captures a vibrant creative spark that’s hard to resist.

There’s a chance the folks who enjoy the adaptation of Daisy Jones & the Six the most will be the ones who are experiencing the story for the first time. While book-to-screen adaptations certainly don’t have to follow story beats to a tee in order to be successful, some of the more drastic changes here don’t feel in service of the central narrative.

“Daisy Jones & the Six” takes what works in the best-selling novel and smartly makes minor adjustments to the material where needed.

The [dramamentary] format doesn’t always work, especially later in the series when the confessional interviews are fewer and farther between, but still: It’s a different approach that gives everything a bit of a zhuzh as the action leaps between then and now, and what people say now and what we see actually happened then.

As a TV series, it’s perfectly fine, in a paradoxically low-wattage, high-intensity way, though it does go on a little long and requires some willful suspension of disbelief.

A series that’s alternately a pantomime pastiche and a fond and stirring tribute. Nonetheless, if the series demands that one wade through some early clunkers, it’s ultimately worth it for a back-half that’s at least as much killer as filler.

The show looks and sounds polished, beautifully capturing the earth-toned aesthetics of the era and producing an impressive album of earworms. But it’s a sun-kissed misfire that reduces what could have been a fascinating look at the profundity of artistic connection to a shallow soap opera.