Critic Reviews

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.

It is certainly trying hard to shock and titillate us. But there’s something oddly prosaic about what I’ve seen so far. There’s a slight awkwardness, too, as if Levinson and his actors are talking dirty for the very first time. Depp commits to all the lustiness, but she’s far more interesting when the show is focused on Jocelyn’s career.

“The Idol” works well enough in its first half-hour, mainly because of the blunt satiric comedy delivered by Azaria’s Chaim, Jane Adams’ record executive, Nikki, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Destiny, who’s another one of Jocelyn’s managers. .... Despite their comically over-the-top dialogue, it’s only when Tesfaye’s club owner named Tedros shows up that “The Idol” loses its tether to reality.

It wants to shock, yes, to relish in the spectacle and traumas of a perilous, punishing, but always bewitching industry. But it also wants desperately to be liked, to be considered current, cutting, and empathetic. It’s not that Episodes 1 and 2 are outright failures, but they are always transparent.

You start to wonder if this is building to anything, and by episode two it seems likely that it’s probably not. .... The Idol shows glimmers of potential when it stops trying so hard to be shocking. There’s a strenuousness to the sex scenes between Depp and Tesfaye that kills any sense of eroticism.

It’s a big, dumb spectacle, and while I don’t hate it, by the end of the first hour, I am a little bored.

The Idol starts out strong but soon melts away after some mild provocation.

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

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

It’s excess for excess’s sake, but none of the fun that comes with a well-placed beat drop. It’s an empty chorus.