‘The Idol’ Age Rating & Parents Guide Explained

HBO is known for making many TV shows with a TV-MA rating. In layperson’s terms, those are the shows that are suitable only for adult audiences due to foul language, sexual content, graphic depictions of violence, and other stuff that aren’t appropriate for younger audiences to watch on a small screen. In this article, we’ll talk about HBO’s latest TV offering, ‘The Idol,’ and tell you the series’ age rating.

‘The Idol’ is officially rated TV-MA (read it as rated R for TV shows). That means this show features content that isn’t recommended to younger viewers at all. The series’ story is about a young pop idol struggling with celebrity life’s rough side. Therefore, the series features explicit depictions of sex, nudity, alcohol, drugs, and profanity. The series sparked much controversy mainly because of its depiction of sexual violence.

HBO created some of our time’s most-known TV-MA shows, such as ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘True Blood,’ ‘Rome,’ and ‘Euphoria.’ ‘The Idol’ was created by Sam Levinson, the creator of ‘Euphoria,’ along with Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, who plays the role of Tedros, and Reza Fahim as co-creators. Lily-Rose Depp stars as Jocelyn, a young and known pop idol who is struggling with her life and career as she meets and gets into a relationship with Tedros, a self-help guru who is also a leader of a modern-day cult.

Why did ‘The Idol’ spark so much controversy?

Although it was first announced in June 2021, when Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye announced that he was working on the project with Reza Fahim and Sam Levinson, the creator of ‘Euphoria,’ we need to be honest and say ‘The Idol’ didn’t catch our eye before its early premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. We’ve seen how the series received very negative first reviews, which criticized the series’ sexual content and themes.

But if having sexual content and nudity is a reason to give TV shows a negative review, we’d get dozens of bad TV shows a year. So we took a closer look and found out that the series had a difficult production process, which turned out to be the calm before the storm. The series’ production initially kicked off in November 2021 but was paused in April 2022. Amy Seimetz, who was initially hired as director and executive producer, abandoned the project due to a creative overhaul when apparently 80% of the season was already filmed.

Levinson took over Seimetz’s directing duties, which resulted in additional rewriting and reshooting of the series, which scrapped Seimetz’s approach to the story. Seimetz’s idea reportedly involved a story about a troubled star who became a victim of the predatory figure inside the industry while also trying to reclaim her own agency. Levinson decided to put more focus on the relationship between Jocelyn and Tedros, with a bigger emphasis on the sexual content.

The first two episodes of ‘The Idol’ were showcased at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2023. Despite the five-minute standing ovation after the episodes’ showing, the first reviews were largely negative. Variety’s Peter Debruge called the series “a sordid male fantasy,” while Rolling Stone’s David Fear said that the series is “more toxic and way worse than you’ve heard.”

What did the audience have to say after the critics?

Following all the negative reviews it received from the critics, everyone waited to see the audience’s reaction. The series premiered on HBO on June 4 (but only the first episode, unlike at the Festival where the first two were shown), and it’s now streaming on MAX. At the time of writing this, the series holds 27% of the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer but 61% of the audience score. It’s not the first time that critics and the audience have disagreed, but the poor rating on IMDb (4.9) has shown that the majority of reviewers gave the series either 1 or 10.

On MAX, Warner Bros. and HBO’s official streaming service, you can stream the first episode of ‘The Idol.’ It can be seen that the age rating on the platform is 18+, which is really obvious considering that from the very first scene, in which Lily-Rose Depp’s character is doing a photo session wearing only a red silk robe, you realize that the series doesn’t try to hide what it is. We aren’t here to tell you if it’s good or bad, that’s for you to decide, but you can check our first episode recap to see what the series is about if you aren’t sure about it.

The first episode of ‘The Idol’ is now streaming on MAX. The rest of the episodes will air weekly, every Sunday night, on HBO ahead of their drop on the platform.