Estrellas del k-pop

A documentary about the K-Pop industry, a major phenomenon you've probably never heard of if you don't follow anything Asian, but one that is massive.

It shows us the day-to-day life of a Korean production company through two groups they manage: a young male group and a female group, where the novelty is that the members come from various countries, whereas it's usually the norm for all group members to be entirely Korean.

There's also a section dedicated to a star going through a rough patch and their journey outside the music labels.

The thing is, much of the documentary tries to show how hard and challenging it is to be a K-Pop artist, but it's not clear to me who is trying harder to sugarcoat things.

If you know nothing about this world, it can serve as general knowledge and a brief introduction, but if you're already familiar with it, even just a little, it's most likely to disappoint you, as it's one of the least natural documentaries I've ever seen in my life.

Apple TV+ only has maybe two good to great TV series and only one is running right now. Having been in the centre of the music industry for 25 years and Apple heavily advertising this on their banners I thought, after the Beastie Boys Mark Ronson and other doc's this might be half interesting. Alas......nope.

The series seems like it's the producers have been heavily 'influenced' by the music labels themselves; all-powerful in South Korea and, venturing an educated guess, are stakeholders in the production company/companies that produced this froth.

Half the content is a huge, unsubtle advertorial plugging the record labels as they crowbar one hopeful new band's non-story after the other. It's like Pop Idol without the sporadic surprising talent and callous-but-shamefully-entertaing, exploitative shaming of hapless train-wrecks. The other half of the series is made up of young, dime-a-dozen youngsters revealing that (huge surprise) the music industry is a tiny bit cut-throat. An example is after just one (their first) failed record contract tand individual left their label/manager (who let them out of contract (very lucky - the likes of Rita Ora wasted several years signed-but-shelved by the likes of Jay-Z's Rock-A-Fella imprint - a common and shameful practice) and are a bit sad and my knee hurts. This individual's lack of stamina is this bad at twenty and lack of gorm thought it would be good to advertise this awful CV on TV. Go and look at teenagers' pictures of their food on facestergram - you'll be more entertained.

And that's the series' formula. It's completely free of all the elements that make a good documentary. The stories are there to be had. I know BTS's label boss/manager's story is a brilliant one in itself, for a fact. But the urge to make a droning and possibly influenced preprospective of bands that have done nothing and most likely never will just ain't good telly, man.

As someone who's spent 25 years in the music industry, hitting the charts with my own band and producing many big names including a certain hooj K-POP acronym, I cannot justify the £9 a month for what is now only 45 minutes of decent viewing a week. The rest parades bigs stars in big budget, beautifully stylised dramas/thrillers but with little to no substance - the worst crime in TV/Film. If Apple wasn't literally sitting on cash that would cover our national debt I wonder if, by now, Apple TV would no longer exist or would, by now, been forced to get the act together from the normal commercial and/or budgetary forces. Steve Jobs would be losing his mind. Yes, Apple devices have been some of the most beautifully designed and engineered of all machines but Apple's rise to the gods started and continued with the fact their software was written so well it was an intuitive pleasure to use. It's fast, concise and pretty to the point work can become pleasure and not hard work. Maybe they should apply the same modus operandi to their TV content. I fear Mr Jobs (RIP) maybe screaming the same missive from the grave.