Yes, The Idol Was Annoyingly Bad; No, It's Not The Worst TV Show in History
The latest HBO show failed spectacularly, but most of the criticism comes from the ambitions of the project.
With the conclusion of The Idol TV series, countless articles have appeared here and there roasting the show and making it look like one of the most despicable projects ever created.
Upon closer inspection, however, the series is simply extremely bland and mediocre, but not the "spawn of Satan" as some reviewers make it out to be, but there is a pretty simple explanation for such a heated reaction.
The Idol is not one of the worst shows ever created, as there are plenty of far worse projects out there.
But the main problem with it is that the show simply fell victim to its own ambitions, as the aforementioned worse projects typically have a much smaller budget and weren't painted as some high art by their marketing campaigns.
So, of course, The Idol looks a thousand times worse compared to them, just because of the scale of the disaster itself.
The series is not completely devoid of at least some positive aspects. The cinematography is great (which is probably the case with most of HBO's projects), so at least that is not God-awful.
And the premise, even if it was shamelessly wasted, was decent. Let's face it, the core idea of Lily-Rose Depp's Jocelyn could have been a great story, and there are still tiny glimpses of that lost potential here and there throughout the show.
Yes, it's undermined by bad acting from the leads and a completely pointless, anticlimactic finale, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's not 100% awful (even if the "good" part is only about 10%).
Finally, there are some "so bad it's good" moments that make the show at least somewhat enjoyable, though definitely not in the way the creators intended. The Weekend's Tedros provides most of them with how serious he is while acting like a cartoon character.
So let's be honest, The Idol is undoubtedly bad, but it's not the worst thing ever created, so the show can even be enjoyed to a certain extent (albeit for all the wrong reasons) if you have the right attitude. And if it hadn't been on the scale that it was, no one would have even noticed.