TAGGED AS: Cannes Film Festival, news, streaming, television, TV
The premiere of The Idol at the Cannes Film Festival put some critics off their canapés this week. Plus, Game of Thrones star Indira Varma will join the new season of Doctor Who, Sigourney Weaver will star in and executive produce The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Prime Video ordered Daniel Dae Kim spy thriller Butterfly to series, Only Murders in the Building season 3 may have a musical episode, and a trailer dropped for season 3 of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.
TOP STORY
Euphoria creator Sam Levinson and music artist Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s HBO drama The Idol went into its Cannes Film Festival premiere with baggage: for one, sources in a fiery March Rolling Stone expose calling the production “a s—show” and “torture porn.”
Starring Lily-Rose Depp and Tesfaye, the delayed series will finally roll out to viewers early next month. Critics who saw the Cannes premiere, however, are warning that the series, about a music star who falls under the influence of a cult-like leader, comes off as “sleazy” and “gross.” It currently has a 27% Tomatometer score on 15 reviews. Here are some reactions from the critics at Cannes:
“It’s crude, gross, and sexist.” – Robert Daniels, The Playlist
“Grim, gross, and vulgar.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411
“The show’s sleaze (intentional and not) would be one thing, but it’s the hideous, self-excusing presentation of rape culture that rankles.” – Caspar Salmon, The Daily Beast
“Sexiness is absent in The Idol, for all Depp’s loveliness. Instead, it feels more like sleaze and torture porn.” – Jo-Ann Titmarsh, London Evening Standard
“Nasty, brutish, [feels] much longer than it is, and way, way worse than you’d have anticipated.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone
“The script seems calculated to fool audiences into thinking they’re observing how Hollywood operates, when so much of it amounts to tawdry clichés.” – Peter Debruge, Variety
“Even the music is dreadful.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK)
The reviews are not all negative, however:
“The Idol offers up enough regular old entertainment to balance out his aggressive flourish and the bluster of his thematic ambitions.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“The way it captures the sickness of the fame machine will stay with you long after the credits roll.” – Lex Briscuso, Mashable
“The same audiences that fell hard for Euphoria — another show about the terrors of being young — will likely do the same for this one. It is buzzy, brazen television that will do exactly what it set out to do: get people talking.” – Douglas Greenwood, Vogue
And Ed Potton of the Times (UK) offered this backhanded compliment: “There’s an authentic and chilling lack of worthiness in the way #MeToo and mental health are tackled.”
The Idol premieres on Sunday, June 4 on HBO. – Debbie Day
Tim Robinson’s offbeat brand of humor is coming back to Netflix for a new installment and, by the looks of the above trailer, we can safely say, “Triples is best.”
There’s nothing really coherent going on in the clip – well, aside from a bunch of blabbering screaming fits by the program’s star and creator – but that’s all a part of the Emmy-winning sketch series’ charm. And considering the stacked roster of guest stars, which includes Jason Schwartzman, Tim Meadows, Fred Armisen, Sam Richardson, Will Forte, Patti Harrison, Ayo Edebiri, Mitra Jouhari, Tim Heidecker, Beck Bennett, Conner O’Malley, Biff Wiff, and Carmen Christopher, we’re betting this new outing will tickle the funny bone in a variety of disturbing and concerning ways.
“We’re gonna go nuts,” a random man says in the trailer. We believe you, Mr. Robinson. And we are here for it.
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson season 3 premieres on May 30 on Netflix.
More trailers this week: Idris Elba in Hijack, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, and teasers for the first seasons of Justified: City Primeval, Secret Invasion, and animated King Kong series Skull Island. For more of the latest TV and streaming trailers, visit the Rotten Tomatoes TV YouTube channel.
Sigourney Weaver (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)
Sigourney Weaver heads to television as the star and executive producer of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Prime Video’s seven-part adaptation of Holly Ringland’s debut novel follows nine-year-old Alice Hart who, after surviving a terrible home fire, is taken in by her estranged grandmother June to Thornfield, a remote rural property with vast flower fields and many secrets.
Joining Weaver in the series is Asher Keddie, Leah Purcell, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Frankie Adams, Alexander England, Charlie Vickers, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Sebastián Zurita, Alyla Browne, and Xavier Samuel.
Produced by Amazon Studios, Made Up Stories, and Fifth Estate, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is executive produced by Jodi Matterson, Bruna Papandrea, and Steve Hutensky of Made Up Stories, Weaver, Sarah Lambert, and Glendyn Ivin, who will direct all seven episodes and serve as showrunner.
Indira Varma (Photo by Michael Tullberg/FilmMagic)
Game of Thrones and Obi-Wan Kenobi alum Indira Varma will join the new season of Doctor Who. Sort of a homecoming (she previously appeared in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood), Varma will step into the mysterious role of The Duchess once the 15th Doctor (to be played by Ncuti Gatwa) graces TV screens next year.
“I’m thrilled to be in Doctor Who and particularly excited to be crossing cosmic paths with Ncuti, as the Doctor, and look forward to creating interplanetary mischief with him,” Varma said via Deadline. “I loved playing Suzie Costello for Russell T. Davies in Torchwood so am thrilled to be entering this world again.”
Davies return to the world has attracted a bevy of big named to the series, including the return of fan favorite David Tennant, as well as Catherine Tate, RuPaul’s Drag Race star Jinx Monsoon, and Jonathan Groff.
When it returns for this highly-anticipated new season, Doctor Who will stream globally on Disney+.
Daniel Dae Kim (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
Prime Video has officially ordered six-episode spy thriller Butterfly, with Daniel Dae Kim as star and executive producer, Variety reports.
According to the official logline, the series (which is based on the BOOM! Studios graphic novel created by Arash Amel) will center on “David Jung (played by Kim), an enigmatic, highly unpredictable former U.S. intelligence operative living in South Korea, whose life is blown to pieces when the consequences of an impossible decision from his past come back to haunt him, and he finds himself pursued by Rebecca, a deadly, sociopathic young agent assigned to kill him.”
Production on the series will not begin until the WGA strike (and potential SAG-AFTRA and DGA strikes) have been resolved.
Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez in Only Murders In the Building season 2 (Photo by Patrick Harbron/Hulu)
This may be speculation, but there are strong rumblings that a musical episode will be coming to season 3 of Only Murders in the Building. Variety recently spoke with the musical theater duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, whose Broadway adaptation of Some Like It Hot recently broke $1 million at the box office and earned 13 Tony nominations, the most for 2023’s ceremony.
“We’ve worked on the next season of Only Murders in the Building,” Shaiman said. “We’re not allowed to say anything more than that, but you could probably do that math.”
We’ll be the first to admit that math isn’t our strong suit, but something tells us Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin will be doing a little song and dance in the episodes. Could series newcomers Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd, and Jesse Williams be involved in these musical shenanigans, as well? We’ll find out soon.
Only Murders in the Building season 3 premieres on Tuesday, August 8 on Hulu.
