Starring Lily Rose-Depp and Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye, 'The Idol' is a new provocative drama series created by Sam Levinson. It follows the story of Jocelyn (Lily Rose-Depp), an emerging pop star who falls in love with a cult leader, Tedros (The Weeknd).
The show just aired its finale on 2nd July and the critics have all unanimously dubbed this series as a 'boring' disaster.
Although the stars of the show have tried to offset some of the negative reviews, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes has been wrapped up at 41% while the critic score plateaued at 22%.
'It is not just that The Idol is one of the worst programs ever made – it’s also possibly the most squandered opportunity ever,' read a review by The Guardian's Leila Latif.
'The show’s star power, sex appeal, creative team, and the big bucks HBO reportedly shelled out for the five-episode season still couldn’t save it from harsh reviews, memes of Tesfaye’s acting chops, complaints of a paper-thin plot, and critiques of Depp’s seemingly gratuitous sex scenes,' said a review by Rolling Stone's Cheyenne Roundtree.
After airing the first two episodes at Cannes, the critics walked away and left the Tomatometer at a bleak 9%.
'It had shockingly little to say about either pop music or power dynamics. What was the point of all that?' said The New York Times’ Esther Zuckerman about the finale.
The Telegraph's Ed Power had this to say about the show and the finale as he give it a one-star review: 'If anything, the set has been cut short, with the show mysteriously trimmed from six to five episodes, the last of which confirmed it was not only the worst TV show of the year – but a potential turkey for the ages. It was the Dark Side of the Moon of terrible telly – so cringe-inducing it’s hard to imagine how it got off the drawing board.'
The Idol, Sam Levinson's daring new series, has encountered criticism at every level of its creation, prior to its launch, and during its weekly delivery.
A review by CNN's Brian Lowry read, 'The show bent over backward (and occasionally forwards and sideways) to feel provocative, but its most salient flaw wasn’t so much being offensive as simply boring, a quality that persisted over its five episodes.'
'What played out on screen seemed to support accounts, denied by those involved with its production, about the show being creatively troubled and chaotic behind the scenes,' Lowry continued.
'The Idol' is available to stream on HBO Max in the US, Sky Atlantic in the UK, and Sky.com in Ireland. Be maybe just give it a miss!
