The Idol (2023)

It comes close to some profound insight into our times. Striking and sordid, you’ll want to jump straight in the shower after an hour in The Idol’s polluting company.

Here is a show purporting to satirise sexual exploitation while relishing it.

It comes across as cynical, condescending, exploitative and flat.

It is a hopeless try-hard, and worse, it's painfully dull. Starring Lily-Rose Depp and pop star The Weeknd (billed under his real name, Abel Tesfaye), “Idol” doesn’t work on any level.

Lily-Rose is fully committed. She gives everything: body, soul, and heart. And yet, you can’t help but wonder why she must answer for this much while receiving only morsels of a character. She deserves better. Unless “The Idol” changes drastically in the next few episodes, she will be nothing more than the window dressing of a concept in service of a misguided, gross, unaware, and untenable vanity project.

Sex talk that manages to be a turn-off in two different ways is some screenwriting feat. Even the music is dreadful.

The only thing shocking about this vanity production from The Weeknd, whose acting runs the gamut from A to B, is how shockingly bad it is. From its leering male gaze to its juvenile eroticism and cringy dialogue, the premiere episode hits a new low in creative ineptitude.

If you block out the noise surrounding the production and focus solely on the story being told, what you find is a captivating, provocative, and disturbing look behind the pop music curtain, and an outstanding performance by Lily-Rose Depp.

Weird Art, each view in the nature ...

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Sam Levinson (Euphoria) co-created this series, so raw emotions and edgy encounters are expected. Lily-Rose Depp plays a pop star who's recovering from a breakdown, while facing pressure to repair her image and prep for a tour. Along comes an enigmatic character (played by The Weekend, who also co-created the series) and he disrupts everything in the most depraved ways. This includes intense, intimate sex scenes and lots of depraved actions, including torture. All this is supposed to give us insight into the star's feelings, while creating an oppressive cult-like environment. This has gone much further in every direction than Euphoria, but it feels intentionally provocative and shamelessly prurient. Although Depp and the other actors handle the serious intent well, the whole enterprise feels sordid more for effect than for introspection. BTW, the final ep wraps things up in an absurdly happy ending.

The only redeeming quality that this show has is how ironically funny it can be, cause it thinks it's teying to be deep, but really it justmakes it look stupid.