Striking and sordid drama oozes with body horror

Sam Levinson’s ‘The Idol’ delivers a compelling portrait of the aimlessness of 21st-century youth

- Nick Hilton

"Does that look like someone on the verge of a psychotic break?" asks a record label executive in the opening scenes of The Idol, Sky's glossy new six-part drama from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson. We are looking down on a woman - scarcely more than a girl - wearing a bikini so small it is hardly visible to the naked eye, puffing away on a cigarette while dark sunglasses mask her baggy eyes. She is a corpse, propped up for dance rehearsals, studio sessions and Vanity Fair interviews, but otherwise left with cadaverous inscrutability. Does she look like someone on the verge of a psychotic break? Time will tell.

Lily-Rose Depp is Jocelyn, a pop star recovering from a nervous breakdown and the traumatic loss of her mother. She chainsmokes and stalks around her Hollywood home in skimpy outfits, while a coterie of grown-up executives pressure her into releasing a new single and heading back on tour. It's no surprise, then, that she takes refuge in the mysterious figure of Tedros (Abel Tesfaye, better known by his own pop-star pseudonym, The Weeknd), a nightclub owner who seems simultaneously overawed by, and immune to, Jocelyn's charms. "You've got the best job in the world," he tells her. "You should be having way more fun."