The Idol: The Weeknd, Sam Levinson productively dodge good storytelling in HBO slog

After months of experiences detailing a disastrous creation, an exodus of forged and crew, and poor opinions out of the Cannes Movie Pageant, HBO’s tunes sector drama The Idol, about a undesirable woman pop star (Lily-Rose Depp) who falls for a self-assistance expert and cult leader (Canadian singer-turned-actor Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye), premiered on Sunday night time.

Tesfaye co-produced the collection with Euphoria showrunner Sam Levinson — and pricey god, anyone ought to have stopped them.

The show opens with a tediously extensive sequence where Jocelyn (Depp) is posing for a partly nude image shoot, writhing and purring for the digicam, as 1 does. Close by, her inventive director Xander (pop singer Troye Sivan) and record label exec Nikki (Hacks‘ Jane Adams) opine, teetering rather annoyingly into exposition, about Jocelyn’s star graphic: she had a psychotic breakdown following her mother’s loss of life a 12 months prior and is returning to daily life in the community eye.

The terms “psychological ailment is alluring” are explained out loud.

Jocelyn’s shoot is interrupted when an intimacy co-ordinator methods in to remind the photographer that the singer’s nudity rider restricts which components of her physique can be proven. When Jocelyn receives wind of the co-ordinator’s intrusion, she speaks to her manager Chaim (Hank Azaria, executing a puzzling accent) — it’s her system, right after all, and she can do what she would like with it. The man ends up locked in a closet, Levinson has made his contempt for intimacy co-ordinators identified, and we transfer on.

Issues commence to get bushy after the relaxation of Jocelyn’s group — assistant and very best mate Leia (Shiva Newborn‘s Rachel Sennott), co-manager Future (Tony nominee Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and publicist Benjamin (Schitt’s Creek‘s Dan Levy) — uncover that a compromising photo of her has leaked on social media, the place she’s been explained, in graphic conditions, as the object of male enjoyment.

Let’s pause there. As considerably as it’s painful to acknowledge, one particular can understand what Levinson et al are heading for in this article. Through an era of the pop star comeback story, wherever lots of of the most renowned girls of the aughts are reclaiming their personalized narratives more than a 10 years following they have been subjected to gruelling, misogynist public attention, The Idol is seeking to satirize the latest feminist-bent of female celeb, undercutting the girl electric power of it all with a tale of sleaziness enabled by field and social media.

That is an appealing premise. But if this initially episode is just about anything to go by, The Idol fails miserably. As considerably as Depp brings a sort of naturalism to the part — this sort of as her scenes with Sennott, the flustered friendployee — the character she’s participating in is like a paper doll, scarcely emoting. People never have to be likeable (we’re perfectly into the age of the Television set anti-hero, Succession and Barry being two recent illustrations) but the least they can be is not boring, specially in a series that was billed to be as captivating and risqué as this a person. 

Overstimulating with small takeaway

Like any HBO present, The Idol has higher output worth and classy cinematography. But its compound-disinclined creator, Levinson, is extra involved with overstimulating his viewers than stating nearly anything new or deserving about the pressures that ladies facial area in the public eye. 

He throws a entire bunch of photographs at us — a masturbation scene, an erotic asphyxiation scene, the protagonist’s admission that she likes how her love curiosity is “rapey” — but there is minor takeaway, other than Levinson’s lower-hanging drive to provoke pearl-clutchers.

Although unwinding at a nightclub with her buddies, Jocelyn meets Tesfaye’s character Tedros, who owns the joint. He slimily approaches her for a dance, later on telling her, “You obtained the best job in the world. You ought to be obtaining way more pleasurable.” By the way, that’s sort of how this reviewer felt while using notes.

Like his present-day Harry Styles, Tesfaye experienced a very good turn in a critically acclaimed movie (enjoying himself as The Weeknd in 2019’s Uncut Gems) that led to delusions of overall performance grandeur: he is not a good actor. And if multiple studies from Deadline, IndieWire and Rolling Stone are correct, he is not a very great producer, possibly.

Amy Seimetz, the unbiased filmmaker behind Sunshine You should not Glow and The Girlfriend Encounter, was at 1st connected to The Idol as its writer-director. But she left mid-production in April 2022, reportedly following Tesfaye was unhappy that her method to the tale leaned way too much into the feminine viewpoint. Bullet productively dodged!

It truly is unfortunate to believe that we would not get to see Seimetz’s variation of The Idol. A number of years back she directed a film called She Dies Tomorrow that was an creative, haunting and amusing depiction of a female grappling with psychological illness and grief, something that — soon after comprehensive reshoots, recuts, rewriting and a considerable overhaul of the solid and crew — the charlatan Levinson has not arrive even shut to conjuring.

The Idol airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Crave.