"There is a moment in the trailer for Simon Cowell's new Netflix show, The Next Act, that is almost touching in its adherence to the way things once were. Cowell, who we see on a variety of beige sofas primly clutching his knees, talks about how to curate a new boyband, 20 years after the launch of his first TV talent show."
"Which doesn't mean that a new generation of viewers can't be lured in by Cowell's expertise. The question of whether 66-year-old Cowell can tweak a dusty and decades-old model has less to do with current music trends just as well, since pop music has moved from TV to TikTok, which Cowell says he hates than the music executive's extremely well-tested ability to make good TV and bend his persona to align with the times."
"In the rollout of publicity for the new show, Cowell has made a good fist of expressing regret at how rude he used to be to contestants, apologising in the New York Times, after some cajoling, for being a dick, and putting his eye-rolling, grimacing performance as a judge down to the tedium of audition days rather than what most of us understood it to be: the extraction of lolz out of confused individuals who had the misfortune to appear on his shows."
A trailer for Simon Cowell's Netflix show, The Next Act, frames a nostalgic attempt to recreate the old talent-show model by curating a new boyband two decades after his first TV success. Cowell presents the effort as risky and warns of losing relevance if it fails, while many younger viewers already lack awareness of him. The core challenge is the migration of pop discovery from television to platforms like TikTok, which Cowell disfavors. Cowell's enduring strength is his capacity to make compelling television and adapt his persona. He has repeatedly apologised for past rudeness and sought to soften his image ahead of the show's launch.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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