A slick director drives a cherry red convertible.
A nightclub owner carries a Coke scoop and wears his hair in a rat tail.
A troubled pop star masturbates while choking herself.
Those images could be from an erotic thriller by Brian De Palma, Paul Verhoeven or Adrian Lyne, directors who were prominent in the 80s and 90s thanks to films such as “Body Double” (Mr. De Palma), “Basic Instinct” (Mr. Verhoeven) and “9 ½ Weeks” (Mr. Lyne).
But those scenes were actually part of “The Idol,” the HBO series that debuted Sunday with the apparent intent of reviving an almost-dead genre.
Filled with close-ups of luxury goods and body parts, “The Idol” also recalled the work of lesser filmmakers whose R-rated creations populated the late lineups of HBO and its rivals long before the rise of prestige television.
It was a style that died out over the years – the death knell might have been Mr Verhoeven’s infamous “Showgirls”, an expensive flop of 1995 – and it seemed highly unlikely that it would make a return to the cultural stage amidst of the #MeToo movement.
As Karina Longworth, creator of the film history podcast “You Must Remember This,” recently noted, today’s movies contain so few exciting sex scenes that she “would meet the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the production code of the 1930s.”
The ancient aesthetic was on full display in the opening moments of “The Idol,” a series created by Sam Levinson, Abel Tesfaye (known as the Weeknd), and Reza Fahim, three men who came of age browsing late-night cable channels was a frequent pastime for adolescent boys.
The first episode opens with the pop star Jocelyn, played by Lily-Rose Depp, baring her breasts during a photo shoot while a team of handlers, crew members and an ineffective intimacy coordinator look on.
Later, Mrs. Depp’s character smokes in a sauna, rides in the back of a Rolls-Royce convertible, and rubs against a man she just met (a club owner played by Mr. Tesfaye) on a dance floor bathed in smoky red light. . There will be no flannel pajamas for Joss; a few wake-up scenes make it clear to viewers that she sleeps in a thong.
It’s not just the show’s unnecessary nudity that harks back to Mr. Lyne and company, but also the overall look and mood, reminiscent of a seedy glamor from the days of boxy Armani suits and cocaine nights. A key setting is a $70 million mansion in Bel Air that looks like something out of Mr. De Palma’s “Scarface,” but is in fact Mr. Tesfaye’s real home.
A number of young viewers say they find sex scenes embarrassingbut Mr. Levinson, who created the HBO drama “Euphoria,” and his fellow producers have made it no secret that they want to pay homage to Cinemax’s heyday (when it was nicknamed Skinemax).
A wink comes to viewers as Joss watches “Basic Instinct” in the darkness of her private screening room. And then there’s the pulsating score, which seems to evoke Tangerine Dream, the German electronic group who scored the sex scene on a train in “Risky Business.” In another nod to the show’s influences, the cast includes “Showgirls” star Elizabeth Berkley.
While it may seem like an outlier, “The Idol” has seemingly tapped into a cultural moment that seemed unthinkable a few years ago: Ms. Longworth recently devoted a season of her movie history podcast to the “Erotic ’80s”; no less a tastemaker than the Criterion Channel which recently presented a series of erotic thrillers from the same era; and last month in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque held a screening of “Basic Instinct.”
Stephanie Zacharek, Time’s film critic, suggested that the return of such fare may have stemmed from the years of comic book movie glut, along with the lack of a certain kind of R-rated movie that was once all the rage for adult viewers. .
“In the ’80s, that was almost all there was in the multiplex,” Ms. Zacharek said. “Adults went to watch those movies. Now we don’t even have that many adult movies, period.”
Ms. Zacharek slammed “The Idol” in her review and in a phone interview — “It feels like it was made by someone who’s never had sex,” she said — but she said she was a fan of “Body Double” ( and even “Showgirls”) and laments the disappearance of such things.
“I always loved those movies, even if I thought they were sexist or ridiculous,” said Ms. Zacharek. “They do have a certain element of glamour.”
It is quite possible that the idea of reviving this particular genre appeals more to Mr. Levinson and his colleagues than to audiences and critics.
After a two-decade absence from big-budget productions, Mr. Lyne made a comeback last year with “Deep Water,” an erotic thriller starring Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck. Mr. Levinson was one of the writers on the film.
“Deep Water”, which was streamed on Hulu upon release, was never shown in theaters. It received a 36 percent approval rating from critics and a 24 percent audience rating on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
“The Idol” has done both better and worse: Only 24 percent of critics have given it a thumbs up, and 63 percent of audiences have weighed in favorably.