Music and TV series: five titles to be recovered during the summer

There is music in many TV series: in the acronyms, in the soundtracks, in the key moments. But there are some in which music does not limit itself to acting as a background and becomes narrative language, emotional motor, distinctive trait of the characters. In these stories, music does not just accompany, but tells. Titles such as, among others, “Stranger Things”, which he is preparing to close with his fifth and last season, or “Wednesday” by Tim Burton, who returned to Netflix yesterday – 6 August – with the second season, have shown how much the songs can shape the identity of a series and remain glued to the memory of the public, becoming viral or rediscopulating songs of the past. But there are series that take one step more, so the music is central, as the theme and as an atmosphere, exploring its power through intimate, autobiographical, desecrating or profoundly romantic stories. For this summer, here are five series to be recovered during the summer, between fictitious bands that seem real, tormented songwriters, producers on the edge of collapse and sentimental rankings to be rewritten. Because sometimes, to truly understand a story, you must first listen to its soundtrack.

“Too Much” (2025)

It might seem wrong to describe “Too Much” as a TV series focused on music. Yet, when Lena Dunham – creator, screenwriter and protagonist of “Girls”, cult series for every millennial dreamer and melancholic – should be involved – it should be known that the songs and everything that revolves around you play a central role. In the new almost autobiographical series of Lena Dunham, recently available on Netflix, the music holds the ranks of the story and marks the personalities of the characters. Each note, every sound and every word not only give rhythm to the narrative, as happens with “Slow like Honey” by Fiona Apple and “Bigger Than The Wole Sky” by Taylor Swift in two key scenes. The artists enter the story directly, both evocative – as happens with Bob Dylan – and in a concrete way, with Rita Ora, Star of the ninth episode. Not to mention that one of the protagonists is a songwriter. Written by Dunham with the collaboration of her husband, the English musician Luis Felber, “Too Much” tells the love story between an American girl named Jessica – played by Megan Stalter – who moves to London for work, and Felix, a British musician – played by Will Sharpe.

“Daisy Jones & The Six” (2023)

Anyone who is fan of the Fleetwood Mac, or even just the imagination surrounding the historic band, especially if born late to see it in business, cannot fail to have seen “Daisy Jones & The Six”. Taken from the novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid, the TV series landed on Amazon Prime Video in 2023, is set in a Los Angeles dominated by the rock of the seventies. “Daisy Jones & The Six” says the rise and fall of the fictitious Rock Band protagonist, interspersing documentary style interviews with group members and cinematographic scenes, with filming of concerts and registration sessions. Through original songs that do not only do as a background, but impose themselves as a narrative voice and beating heart, the series draws a parable of glory and disintegration, told with the intensity of a band that has never existed, but seems to have really come out of the seventies.

“High Fidelity” (2020)

For some he would never have to see the light, for others they should have made a second season: the High Fidelity reboot held the bench for only one season, but he was able to hit the mark for several reasons. First of all, Rob is no longer the disillusioned male protagonist of Nick Hornby’s cult novel or the film with John Cusack from 2000: here Rob is a woman, played by Zoë Kravitz, and this simple gender reversal opens new perspectives on a story made of musical obsessions, wrong loves and sentimental charts. The series, produced by Hulu in 2020, does not just transpose the original, but re -reads it with intelligence and freshness, bringing it to the present between Brooklyn, vinyls and liquid relationships. Zoë Kravitz, magnetic and vulnerable, holds the confrontation with the iconicity of the film – and in a curious game of references, is the daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, who in the film played Marie de Salle, one of the conquests of Rob. A single cycle of episodes was enough to build a small contemporary cult, updating the basic question: how do you survive your emotional failures without stopping believing that music can save us? By preparing a playlist, probably.

“Pistols” (2022)

For some it was a heresy, for others a duty tribute to one of the most incendiary bands in the history of rock: “Pistol”, the series directed by Danny Boyle, made discussing well before arriving on the screen. More than the soundtrack made noise, were the bickering among the former bandmates in the sex pistols: John Lydon, Aka Johnny Rotten, attempted (in vain) to block the exit, declaring themselves betrayed and misunderstood, while the other members supported the project as a way to regain a often mitized and exhausted narrative.
Taken from the memories of the guitarist Steve Jones, “Pistol” does not try to be an objective chronicle: it is a visceral, subjective, dirty and noisy story as the music that inspired it. But to surprise is also the space dedicated to those who, although not part of the band, played a fundamental role in that cultural revolution: Chrissie Hynde, played with intensity and grace by Sydney Chandler, emerges as an autonomous and magnetic figure, far from the simple role of appearance in the world of pistols. To tell the punk it is not enough to raise the volume: you have to show the cracks, the broken ties, the contradictions. “Pistol” does it angrily, but also with an unexpected look of tenderness.

“Vinyl” (2016)

There was everything, at least on paper: the New York of the seventies as theater, the record industry as a battlefield, and behind the scenes a dizzying team: Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese, Rich Cohen and Terence Winter. “Vinyl”, aired on HBO in 2016, promised to tell the birth of modern rock with a dirty, polished and disillusioned eye. And he did it, but not in the way they all expected.
It is not a series that takes you to the first listening: “Vinyl” is stratified, obsessive, at times even repulsive, as certain concept albums that only after a while reveal their profound meaning. Between excesses of drugs, ego that explode and bands that are born and die in a single weekend, the series follows the parable of Richie Window, producer on the verge of personal and professional collapse. But it is also a painful and fascinating fresco on an era in which everything seemed possible – until it clashed with reality. The second season had been announced, then canceled. As if the series also had ended the victim of that same record system he wanted to tell.