{"id":177508,"date":"2025-12-10T09:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T09:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/177508\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T09:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T09:45:11","slug":"simon-cowell-is-a-man-out-of-time-in-his-sad-and-bleak-netflix-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/177508\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Cowell is a man out of time in his sad and bleak Netflix show"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Simon Cowell<\/a> arrives on a jet ski, his face gone berserk. His cheeks are plumped, his teeth blinding. His new Netflix<\/a> show, he tells us, is his last chance. \u201cIf I can\u2019t get it right,\u201d he says, \u201cI\u2019ll have to accept that I\u2019ve lost whatever I had before.\u201d It was oh so simple in his heyday. You could just grab a handful of boys off a street corner, wax them down and Topman their wardrobes<\/a>, ship them to a recording studio in Sweden, and get a top five hit. Yes, often they ended up cursed to the Butlins circuit once the attention died down, or got jobs as fork-lift drivers or OnlyFans models or Celebrity Big Brother contestants. But god it was easy. When did it all go sideways?<\/p>\n

Simon Cowell: The Next Act, which launches on Netflix today, follows the pop mogul as he attempts to put together a new boyband. But don\u2019t let the fly-on-the-wall, talking-head docuseries sheen fool you \u2013 this is your standard X Factor riff. It\u2019s awash in producer-orchestrated drama and the storytelling tropes that made that show appointment viewing on Saturday nights 10 or 15 years ago, but which now seem hoary and geriatric, like something vaguely offensive once said by Louis Walsh. He even surrounds himself with low-wattage versions of Nicole Scherzinger or Cheryl: there\u2019s the Little Mix songwriter Kamille<\/a>, and another songwriter who looks a bit like Jason Schwartzman with a ponytail. He\u2019s even dragged Pete Waterman out of the cupboard he\u2019s been locked in for the last few decades. <\/p>\n

Different, though, is the sense of race-against-the-clock fatalism that Cowell now exhibits. I do believe him when he says he thinks it might all be over. The X Factor stopped making real superstars years before its \u201cresting\u201d<\/a> in 2019. Britain\u2019s Got Talent and its American equivalent do still exist, but in that liminal, vaguely nefarious way that somehow kept the lights on at WH Smith for years. And gone is the lucrative pop entrepreneurialism that made Cowell\u2019s name (before shaping the careers of talent show acts including One Direction and Leona Lewis, he foisted the likes of Robson & Jerome and Westlife on an unsuspecting public). He is a man out of time, Botoxed to oblivion, and suddenly aware that everything everywhere must come to an end. <\/p>\n

But Simon Cowell: The Next Act only has the pretence of straight-talking. It reminded me often of Netflix\u2019s recent Victoria Beckham docuseries, which skirted around anything remotely interesting or dicey in favour of brand polishing and faux honesty. The opening scenes of the series find Cowell and his team sent into crisis mode after only 160 people apply to audition for his new boyband \u2013 a sharp downturn from the time thousands of randoms would descend on Britain\u2019s convention centres for the chance of being judged by Sharon Osbourne. Cowell embarks on a sad Gen-Z press blitz as a result. He joins TikTok, takes part in promotional interviews with a raft of influencers, sits down with Diary of a CEO\u2019s Steven Bartlett. It\u2019d make more sense for him to utilise some of his connections \u2013 maybe get Zayn Malik or Jade Thirlwall on the blower. Then again, all those bridges seemed to have been burnt years ago.<\/p>\n

Initially, the show leans into its slightly humiliating energy, a man of the Noughties reduced to debasing himself for the attention of teenage pip-squeaks. But it quickly skirts off this: the boys do eventually materialise, with fluffy haircuts and moldable warbles, and Cowell returns to his position as benevolent king-maker. The \u201cis he past-it\u201d stuff was a mere plot point, a quick injection of suspense just like in the old days. Even One Direction\u2019s Liam Payne<\/a> meeting a horrible end at the age of 31 \u2013 which occurs in the middle of filming \u2013 isn\u2019t dramatic enough to stop the Cowell train from thundering on.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

In \u2018The Next Act\u2019, Simon Cowell exhibits a sense of race-against-the-clock fatalism (Netflix)<\/p>\n

Payne\u2019s death does, however, change the temperature of the show. It happens in episode three, the screen fading to black dramatically, in that reality TV shorthand that suggests \u201csomething bad is about to happen\u201d. Cowell pauses production. He takes six days off. Upon his return, he questions whether he should carry on with the project. His decision to keep going comes off like a punchline to a very dark joke. \u201cI can\u2019t take this opportunity away from them,\u201d he says. Cowell\u2019s pledged to try to make these boys stars \u2013 he can\u2019t possibly pull it back now, can he? What a horrible thing to do to them, he reckons.<\/p>\n

To try and mitigate further disaster, he hosts a moodily lit get-together with the 30 or so boys in for a chance of getting into Cowell\u2019s eventual band, as well as their parents. He insists they ask him any question and share any lingering worries they might have, and he\u2019ll answer honestly. The questions we see aren\u2019t particularly probing. One aspiring musician asks Cowell if the boyband really stands a chance of success. \u201cIt\u2019s 50\/50,\u201d Cowell says. One parent asks Cowell what he\u2019d say to his own son if he were in a similar position to theirs. Cowell\u2019s answer is illuminating. He starts to say that, first of all, he\u2019d consider if he thought his son could hack it. \u201cHonestly, do I really, really believe my son can deal with what comes when you become well known?\u201d he asks. \u201cYour life changes. There is no privacy.\u201d A shift then occurs. Cowell, practically mid-sentence, begins to talk about their sons instead of his own. \u201cThey\u2019re gonna be looked after. I\u2019ve always prided myself that I do care about the people I work with \u2013 genuinely care \u2013 and if we\u2019re gonna go forward with the boys, it will be with my absolute belief and support. If you have concerns about anything, call me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Some<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Some of the hopefuls auditioning for Cowell\u2019s new boyband in \u2018The Next Act\u2019 (Netflix)<\/p>\n

The difference here, that Cowell very skillfully deflects, is that Cowell\u2019s son wouldn\u2019t be in a position like their sons. Historically, the grisly paradox of the bands that Cowell shepherded to success \u2013 as well as those brought to fame by his contemporaries like Louis Walsh or Simon Fuller \u2013 was that many of them were working-class strivers with few other chances for a professional leg-up. Many came from the north of England, had distinct accents, or were born into broken homes. Few had pre-existing industry connections, or practical guidance that matched their ambition.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no real understanding in these moments of what Cowell is asking of these starry-eyed teenagers and their parents. What he\u2019s asking them to, if they really felt it best, pass up. \u201cHe must have just felt so much pressure,\u201d an 18-year-old boyband hopeful named Hendrick tells his dad, in the wake of Payne\u2019s death. His father offers a gentle response: \u201cOnce you\u2019re in the limelight, and you\u2019ve got all those people watching you all the time, it might get you down from time to time. You just don\u2019t know, do you?\u201d It\u2019s a simplified interpretation of what happened to Payne \u2013 as well as a very paternal bit of fence-sitting that pays lip service to horror, but not so much that he looks as if he\u2019s meddling in his son\u2019s decision-making. Because, ultimately, Simon Cowell: The Next Act is a platform, an opportunity, a chance at something extraordinary. And that, perhaps, is the most illuminating thing about all of this. It\u2019s irrelevant whether Cowell is a has-been or not, because there will always be a pipeline of dreamers without money or resources, who will weigh up the risks of talent-show fame and decide to bite. Liam Payne be damned. Because, ultimately, what other option is there?<\/p>\n

\u2018Simon Cowell: The Next Act\u2019 is streaming on Netflix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-177508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}