Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam

Lou Pearlman was behind some of the biggest names in 90s US pop, most famously Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. Much later, it also transpired he was the creator of one of the world's largest Ponzi schemes. This fractured, if scattergun documentary, is structured around archive footage mixed with a talking heads format that sees the likes of Backstreet's AJ McLean and Howie Dorough and NSYNC's Chris Kirkpatrick recall starting out with him and what came next. Those hoping for all the band to get back together should rein in their expectations as it's no big surprise that the biggest name to emerge from the bands, Justin Timberlake, is only present in archive footage.

Nevertheless the first episode is likely to lead to you binge-watching all three as it digs into the way that Lou got his young bands to fake it till they made it. This largely involved playing to groups of school kids all around Florida, something that the youngsters didn't question because they, of course, had no experience of what being a pop star should look like. It was when the Back Street Boys headed to German that their career really took off and they scored a record deal before coming back to take America by storm. That, it seems, was all the motiviation Pearlman needed to attempt to repeat the trick with *NSYNC.

Dirty Pop, gradually shows how the bands' members realised that maybe they weren't getting such a good deal as they thought they were, while also offering hints about Pearlman's business dealings. There are early suggests he was a dab hand at forgery and as the series progresses we'll learn how he put the "con" into his Trans Continental empire. While most of the bald information can easily be found online, the presence of those who knew Lou adds a signifcant additional layer. The likes of McLean and Kirkpatrick along with those involved in Lou's business and his old friends look back on the period where Pearlman's business seemed unstoppable with the benefit of hindsight.

The unique element of the series is that David Terry Fine incorporates deep fake videos of Pearlman so that they can show him delivering segments from his book Bands, Brands and Billions: My Top 10 Rules for Making Any Business Go Platinum. Aome might say it's the thin end of the wedge, while recalling the controversy surrounding Road Runner when it was revealed that they had used AI to mimic the voice of Anthony Bordain, here it's arguably a clever gimmick. Firstly, they are above board about this manipulation, clearly stating it onscreen, and secondly it all seems pretty appropriate from a man who was essentially a king of fakes. It also gives Pearlman, who died in 2016 while incarcerated, more of a physical presence..

The archive footage is well edited and though the incidental music is, as is so often the case with this sort of film, unnecessarily distracting, this is a slick package that has plenty going for it whether you're looking for a boy band nostalgia fix or a stranger than fiction true crime tale.