The Idol; Britain on Film; The King Who Never Was

“After all the sex, nudity, swearing and scandal surrounding The Idol, we were braced to be shocked. We were braced to be appalled. But nothing can prepare you to be so incredibly bored. Mercifully, for us, this is the end. Hopefully the ickiness of The Idol will be cast to the annals of history. I would rather never see a nipple on screen again than have to watch a show this lousy.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian

“The last episode confirmed it was not only the worst TV show of the year – but a potential turkey for the ages. It was the Dark Side of the Moon of terrible telly – so cringe-inducing it’s hard to imagine how it got off the drawing board, let alone on to our screens.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“This final episode tells us everything we need to know about how The Idol sees women: manipulative and scheming, but also malleable and objects of desire. It’s a grossly oversimplified version of abuse, a vague plot point and excuse to see Lily-Rose Depp on her knees as opposed to an all-too-familiar feature of fame that deserves a needling.”
Emily Baker, The i

“The series is built on home movie footage. But these were amateur film-makers with ambitions beyond simply capturing Aunty Mabel in the garden. They expended time and effort editing scenes together into mini-documentaries. The results are a fascinating but random collection.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Some of the footage was new to television, some was lifted from more familiar news reels, but the brilliance of this programme was the way it stitched clips together to create a broad tapestry.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“If the film begins with a slight sense of a barrel being scraped, it soon justifies itself as an examination of how much can go right in your life if you have enough power, business connections, money and private travel arrangements. It takes up the genre’s common thread – the contingency of freedom and justice on all the things that should have absolutely nothing to do with it – and adds a royal twist without descending into sensationalism or gorging on the opulence and wealth of everyone involved.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian