TV Review: Sex gets in the way of a good drama in The Idol

The Idol: featuring The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp.

There is a good story at the heart of The Idol (Sky Atlantic and Now). The problem is you have to write it yourself. Because the people who were paid to write this are more interested in causing trouble on Twitter.

It starts well — Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) plays a Britney Spears-type pop goddess about to release her first single in a year. 

We see her pouting in what feels like an ad for Ann Summers, all silky lingerie and barely concealed nipples. 

In the background, various handlers talk about her as if she was a racehorse. 

Everyone heads for the panic stations after a sex picture of Jocelyn appears online, because they want to keep it from her in case it triggers her mental health issues and derails the comeback single. 

They are believably amoral and there is a blank sadness in the way Depp plays it.

And then we are introduced to her nipples. It’s Jocelyn’s decision to reveal them for the photoshoot, but an intimacy coordinator rushes in to say this is not allowed as it’s not in her contract. 

We’re invited to view this as health & safety gone mad, as it was her decision. 

Or else we could see that the no-nudity clause was inserted to protect her from unwelcome pressure.

The problem is, I don’t want to watch a moral conundrum. I want to watch some entertaining drama. 

Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, in The Idol.

And this is a terrible drama that goes downhill after that. Jocelyn meets Tedros (played by musician The Weeknd) in a club, falls under his spell and the rest of the first episode is like a soft-porn movie.

Fourteen-year-old me thought I’d never say this: sex gets in the way of a good drama. The only way it works is in a comedy like Catastrophe, where it’s played for laughs. 

Sex in a drama wanting to be taken seriously never reveals anything about the characters — it just reveals actors trying to stifle a giggle.

The buzz around The Idol is that some producers did a legger because they didn’t like the direction it was taking. 

My guess is that legger happened about 10 minutes into the opening episode when it tried to become a tribute reboot of Basic Instinct (I didn’t pick that movie randomly, there’s a scene where Jocelyn watches it in her mansion).

The show changes its mind a few times. Then it looks as if panic set in and they decided to shoot 50 Shades of Grey footage, hoping we’d all be too turned on to notice that nothing is going on.

If you’re turned on by this, look, whatever works I suppose, but I reckon you have a problem. 

This is throw-back TV that looks like it was made to grab the attention of people who get upset on Twitter for a living. 

Watching it, I couldn’t help the feeling that Donald Trump was back in power.