Hollywood and television have a somewhat checkered history in portraying the birth, development, and evolution of Popular music icons. They either go all bombastic and over the top, or fall back on music-talk cliches, and heavily depending on the music to pave the way. From Elvis to Queen, to Elton John and Whitney Houston, we’ve all had to suffer some form of half pleasure, half disappointment, with how filmmakers have chronicled the lives of these music icons.

And then there’s the fictitious approach to portraying this world of Rock n’Roll - let’s think A Star Is Born, and Almost Famous. So when Taylor Jenkins Reid published her novel Daisy Jones & the Six in the form of an oral history - a once in a lifetime band disbanding at the peak of its success, and decades later, these band members looking back at that period - and let loose the fact that her book was inspired by Fleetwood Mac, these revelations made people perk up trying to connect the dots and assign personalities to the characters in the novel. A best-seller, one knew that it was a Limited Series begging to be made, and sure enough, three episodes dropped on Amazon Prime last Friday.

The first problem I have is the structure of the Limited Series. It tries to have its cake and eat it too. We start with the interviews of the band members and archival footage from the band performing in the 1970’s, but then we get sequences of their recollecting when we know for a fact such footage could not have existed. At that point, a straight narrative of the band’s beginnings would have sufficed.

Then there are two initial narratives at play, that of Daisy growing up and being part of the groupie scene in LA, late 1960’s, alongside that of the band’s origins in Pittsburgh. Too much time is spent on these narratives and it’s only in episode 3 when Daisy and the Six finally meet up.

The music soundtrack during these first three episodes consist of great songs of the era; but as a result, we don’t really get a feel of the original music the band created, and why exactly they were so great. We get snippets of Daisy’s original tunes, but they’re a far cry from say Carole King, who is referenced. The band The Six, also seem to be producing cookie cutter pop tunes and covers.

More interesting is the cast assembled. Riley Keough plays Daisy Jones, and it’s never far from my mind that she’s the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, daughter of Lisa Marie. Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne, who heads The Six, is charismatic enough, but also looks a decade older than his brother and fellow band members.

While there is chemistry between the actors - especially like that between Will Harrison as Graham Dunne, and that of Suki Waterhouse as Karen Sierko, the band’s keyboard player; there seems to be too much of us being told that the band and their music was great, but our not witnessing that or even feeling it. It almost plays more like a domestic drama, with the band taking the place of ‘family’.

There’s still hope for this series to catch fire, but it better start by episode 4, or it’ll be another case of TV adaptation gone sour and advising music fans to just stick to the novel and let one’s imagination take flight.