After weeks — months, years — of bad and troubled buzz (and a not-too-well-received screening at Cannes), HBO’s new series The Idol has finally premiered. The first, hour-long episode was kinky yet empty, like a visit to a red-light district during the pandemic.
There was one fundamental problem right off the bat, and the show’s subsequent episodes may never be able to right it. Lily-Rose Depp plays a world-famous pop star, Jocelyn, who’s trying to revive her career after suffering a nervous collapse. Depp has a striking face — hard, with high cheekbones, a full-lipped, scornful mouth and large, cold eyes — but she never seems damaged or vulnerable. She looks like she could put a cigarette out on Madonna’s hand without batting an eye.
No one, in fact, has bothered giving Jocelyn any psychology at all — she's merely been loaded up with perverse impulses, no more meaningful than bags of groceries shoved into the trunk of an SUV. She bares her breasts during a photo shoot, arouses herself with asphyxiation and, in the show’s most disturbing moment, permits a stranger named Tedros ( Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye, one of the show’s creators) to nearly smother her.
Apparently Tedros will be introducing Joss into some sort of cult. Maybe it’s like the one in Eyes Wide Shut, where characterless women stand around naked in a ballroom, reduced to erotic mannequins and caterers.
In a recent New York Times interview, however, the stars and co-creator/director Sam Levinson (Euphoria) hinted that these two will be engaging in a sinister power play, which may explain a brief clip of Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct. But setting up that sort of dynamic requires more than nodding to director Paul Verhoeven's strange classic. You might as well have gone whole-hog and thrown in clips of Elle, Showgirls and even Starship Troopers.
There was also a lot of flat, flat, obvious satire focused on Jocelyn’s endlessly panicked management team, even though these were played by some of the best members of the cast: Hank Azaria, Jane Adams, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dan Levy as per outlet.
The Idol airs on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m.
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