Critical response
The Idol was panned by critics, who decried its writing, directing, themes and performances (particularly that of Tesfaye), with some deeming it "boring". Critics who attended the series' premiere at the Cannes Film Festival disapproved of its script, direction, and sexual content. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a rating of 19% based on 106 critic reviews, with an average rating of 4.10/10. The site's consensus reads: "Every bit as florid and sleazy as the industry it seeks to satirize, The Idol places itself on a pedestal with unbridled style but wilts under the spotlight". On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average, the series holds a score of 27 out of 100, based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
Leila Latif of The Guardian and Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph respectively described The Idol as "one of the worst programmes ever made" and "the worst TV show of the year". David Fear of Rolling Stone slammed the first two episodes as "nasty, brutish, much longer than it is, and way, way worse than you'd have anticipated", lamenting that the series "has mistaken misery for profundity, stock perversity for envelope-pushing, crude caricatures for sharp satire, toxicity for complexity, nipple shots for screen presence". Levinson's screenwriting was criticized by The Daily Beast's Fletcher Peters as clichéd.
In his review of the first two episodes for Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson described The Idol as "a tawdry tale of sex gone scary, dressed up in the visual vernacular of TV's wunderkind du jour" that "offers up enough regular old entertainment to balance out [Levinson's] aggressive flourish and the bluster of his thematic ambitions". Remarking that "in trying so hard to be transgressive, the show ultimately becomes regressive", Lovia Gyarke of The Hollywood Reporter observed that the series "shows glimmers of potential when it stops trying so hard to be shocking". Writing for Vogue, Douglas Greenwood deemed it "a gorgeous-looking horror show" and "buzzy, brazen television that will do exactly what it set out to do: get people talking". A review from Alex Barasch in The New Yorker considered the series to be "a stylishly shot, faintly sordid project".
Jason Gorber of RogerEbert.com panned Tesfaye's performance as "turgid" and "terrible", while Stephen Rodrick of Variety considered Tesfaye lacking in the charisma described by the series' publicity materials, "trying to play louche but just [coming] off, as one character describes him, 'rapey.'" Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times criticized his "painful line readings and his laughable facial expressions". The New York Times's James Poniewozik wrote that Tesfaye's performance was "flat, except when he overcorrects into outbursts" and called Depp "a watchable screen presence" while criticizing her singing ability.
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