Television series

The Idol

Name: The Idol
Genre: Drama, Music
Released: 2023
Cast: Lily-Rose Depp, The Weeknd, Suzanna Son, Troye Sivan, Jane Adams

Drama

The Idol follows a pop star rebuilding her career under the mentorship of a nightclub promoter with murky intentions. It's a glossy, sexually charged drama about ambition, manipulation, and the cost of fame. Built around The Weeknd's charisma and HBO's willingness to let things get dark and messy. For viewers drawn to stories about power dynamics and the machinery behind stardom—though the execution divided audiences sharply.

TVMaze rating

1.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to glossy, operatic music-industry melodrama where the lush surfaces are the point and you enjoy watching a fragile ego get lost in its own spotlight.

Skip it if you find sexual provocation and cruelty hard to sit through, since it lingers on both and its gloss can feel like it enjoys the excess more than examining it.

What it asks of you: Five episodes, so it is a short commitment, but it asks you to stay with a slick, feverish mood that rarely lets up for long.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Euphoria2019

Another HBO drama that luxuriates in gorgeous cinematography, contemporary music, and the lives of beautiful people in crisis. If you want that mixture of style and despair, with similar production ambition and sexual frankness, this delivers it with more emotional grounding.

But It's a grind. The show doesn't flinch from depicting addiction and trauma in ways that feel relentless rather than cathartic, and some viewers find the darkness punishing rather than illuminating.

Halston2021

A tight five-episode dive into obsession, ego, and the fashion world's machinery. Ryan Murphy explores how genius and self-destruction intertwine in similar ways, with Ewan McGregor delivering a magnetic performance as someone who demands total control.

But It moves fast and doesn't linger on emotional payoff. If you need character depth over narrative momentum, you might feel it skims surfaces.

The Girlfriend Experience2016

Soderbergh's experimental take on power, sex, and performance. It's formally inventive and genuinely interested in how people construct versions of themselves for consumption—the same question at the heart of The Idol, executed with more narrative discipline.

But It's deliberately cool and distant. The formal games sometimes feel like barriers to emotional connection rather than tools that enable it.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Idol

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

A Star Is Born1954

Both follow a performer's rise through a mentor figure, both understand that ambition and self-destruction are often yoked together, both are fascinated by what stardom costs.

George Cukor's version, predating all the remakes. A genuinely tragic film about a woman's ascendance and a man's destruction, with Judy Garland delivering a performance that makes clear why she was the century's greatest entertainer. It's the story The Idol is trying to tell, executed with real gravity.

But It's in black and white and moves at a 1954 pace. The Technicolor gloss of the musical numbers offers beauty but not comfort; watching it means watching real suffering.

Velvet2014

A Spanish drama about ambition and romance in the fashion world with genuine warmth beneath its glamour. It has that same intoxication with beauty and status but finds more humanity in the climbing. Deeply entertaining if you want the fantasy without the nihilism.

But It's considerably lighter and more romantic. If you came for the darkness, the show's fundamental optimism might feel saccharine.

Superstore2015

A comedy about people navigating systems that exploit them, with surprising depth about ambition and compromise. Different genre entirely, but it has real perspective on how institutions grind people down and how people retain dignity within them.

But The tonal distance is enormous. You'd need to want something lighter and kinder, which might feel like a total tonal reset.

Daisy Jones & the Six2023

Another music-adjacent drama about ego, creativity, and romance during the rise of a star. It's more straightforwardly enjoyable, with better chemistry between leads and more earned moments of genuine connection amid the glamour and chaos.

But It's considerably more earnest and less provocative. If you wanted sharp edges, you'll find this smoother and safer.

Feud2017

Ryan Murphy again, this time excavating the relationship between two legends locked in mutual destruction. Exquisitely acted, beautifully shot, and genuinely interested in how women in power are mythologized and destroyed.

But It's a period piece, and the pacing is stately rather than kinetic. Some find it too much conversation and not enough momentum.

The Affair2014

A serialized exploration of how people rationalize their own selfishness and how narrative collapses under the weight of conflicting perspectives. Ambitious storytelling about power, desire, and self-deception that trusts the viewer to hold complexity.

But The narrative games eventually feel more clever than moving. And some of the later seasons lose what made the earlier ones resonate.

Vox Lux2018

Both examine a woman at the intersection of sexual power and complete vulnerability, both understand that the pop music industry is fundamentally built on manufactured identity, both are visually sumptuous in ways that mirror the dissociation their characters feel.

Brady Corbet's portrait of a pop star's evolution from child survivor to global phenomenon. It's deliberately fragmentary and estranged, with Natalie Portman as a woman whose persona has calcified into armor. A serious inquiry into how fame weaponizes people.

But It's austere and withholding. The film refuses catharsis or easy understanding, which some experience as punitive rather than enlightening.

Under the Skin2014

Both films/shows use sexual power and bodily presentation as their primary language, both are interested in how predation operates within systems of desire, both understand that spectacle and vulnerability are often inseparable.

Glazer's hypnotic film about a predatory figure moving through ordinary spaces. It's concerned with perception, performance, how bodies are read and consumed, and how much of identity is surface and adaptation. A difficult, extraordinary meditation on exposure and exploitation.

But It's experimental and demands patience. Very little conventional narrative happens; the power is in mood and abstraction and what you read into silence.