Fittingly, for a show so concerned with its own ideas about artifice and superficiality, the first 20 minutes of The Idol give the impression of a drama that is much better, more robust and more interesting than it goes on to become. Euphoria creator Sam Levinson writes and directs this cartoonishly sleazy tale of a pop star’s gilded life and the guru who sweeps in to shake it and her up. The Idol is already so drenched in noise – is it exploitative? too outrageous? – that it is simply leaning in to the controversy; the streaming platform I watch it on is advertising it as a “headline-making drama”.
That’s one way of spinning the more negative reports that have emerged about the show’s production, but it also provides a heads-up that the programme is going to try hard to be shocking. For its more successful opening scenes, it does this with humour. Pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp, looking blank, though this is surely deliberate) is shooting the cover for her new album, then rehearsing with dancers in the garden of her mansion as a PR crisis explodes in the background: she becomes the top trending topic on Twitter because someone leaks a photograph of her with semen on her face. Her live agent is furious and worries that 14-year-old girls will no longer buy tickets to watch her performing a song called I’m a Freak, the lyrics of which include the lines, “Get down on your knees and get ready to become my bitch.”
