

After just a week on top, Cobra Kai season six has been dethroned over at Netflix’s chart of the most-watched TV shows.
The US is out in front as a sign of what’s to come. Documentary series Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam has jumped ahead of Cobra Kai in the Netflix TV charts.
This is according to Flixpatrol, which lists the three-episode documentary as the most popular show in both the US and UK.
It’s the dark story behind top US boybands like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, that of Lou Pearlman.
He was a big name in music, and helped form these manufactured juggernauts.
However, he was also a conman. As well as pilfering much of the money made by these classic 90s boybands, he lured investors into what was basically a Ponzi scheme, including touting investments for non-existent businesses.
Reviews say the documentary series tells a fascinating tale, from an era some of you may have first-hand memories of.
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A few eyebrow-raising parts are here, in a negative sense, though.
As picked up in The Guardian and Decider reviews, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam uses AI generated content as part of its talking heads.
We get to see an AI-generated Lou Pearlman talking. A fake version of a conman? What is the documentary trying to say here? AI may be everywhere, but we’re not sure we really want it in supposedly hard-hitting documentaries.
But, hey, that’s another reason to check out Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam even if you don’t last the full season. Real members of the Backstreet Boys do appear, though.
Each of the three episodes lasts 42-45 minutes a piece.
Andrew Williams has written about tech for a decade. He has written for a stack of magazines and websites including Wired, TrustedReviews, TechRadar and Stuff.
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