Having been riding a wave of buzz and controversy for months, The Idol has finally premiered on HBO to great fanfare, at least on the part of the people who’ve been promoting it so heavily.
For everyone else, they’ve been conditioned to expect one of the worst TV shows of the year, with Euphoria creator Sam Levinson’s latest at one point plummeting as low as nine percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It did manage to secure a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival following its premiere, but the majority had their knives out ready to trash the tale of debauchery from the second they laid their eyes on it.
The questionable content led to many people across the internet urging others not to check out The Idol driven by nothing but morbid curiosity, but the campaign to ensure it doesn’t get hate-watched appears to have failed when a lot of folks have watched it, and a great deal of them seem to hate it.
Trying to be controversial isn’t big or clever, but that looks to have been Levinson’s number one driving force when cobbling together the wretched rampage of excess. There isn’t much to recommend at all, while even the series’ more headline-grabbing and attention-seizing moments come off as forced and cringeworthy rather than being artistically justified.
Each to their own, though, but HBO audiences will have nobody to blame but themselves should a project that’s in danger of drowning in hate immediately after its premiere prove popular enough to secure a second season renewal.