Watch Simon Cowell’s TV search for a new boyband – and see how our world has changed | Emma Brockes

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. “There is a huge risk here,” he says, heavy with drama. “If this goes wrong, it will be: ‘Simon Cowell has lost it.’” In fact, as anyone who has an eye on dwindling audience figures for his existing shows knows, for the vast majority of 18- to 24-year-olds – or even for younger millennials – the more likely response will be, “Simon who?”

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.

Anyway, we’ve heard it all before; Cowell has been making these sorts of noises after being prodded by journalists for a good 15 years now. He made them to me in 2011 when I visited him at his rental house in the Hollywood Hills, a place of white marble and empty surfaces, and where he spoke about his life from the standpoint of a passive observer. It was, it appeared to me at the time, as if Cowell regarded his personality itself as running on free-market principles over which he had no particular influence – competing elements in which, inevitably, sometimes the baser ones prospered. Whatever the outcome, it came with a shrug and a “What can you do?”

It is a babyish dodge common to those who, having done very well, feel under no pressure to explain themselves. Still, I’ve always had a soft spot for Cowell, who combines American drive and ambition with a properly and compellingly odd duck personality that can really only be British. “I’m very odd,” he said at the time. “I am.” The pointy shoes, the funny wardrobe, the awkward physicality; all of which, in the context of LA conformity, still seem to me to be vaguely endearing. You only had to look at the empty mansion to imagine the challenges of that particular interior life. (Cowell has been open about his depression and insomnia.) If he’s a difficult person to work with – and I imagine he is – when Cowell talks about his receptiveness to anyone in his company, from the doorman up, to come to him with a good idea, I believe him.

The new show will present an older, softer version of Cowell, whether because that’s who he is these days or because the market requires it, who knows – but it’s a fact communicated in the show by the inclusion of Lauren Silverman, Cowell’s longtime girlfriend and glancing shots of their 11-year-old son, Eric. And while he will, presumably, hold back on all his old judging antics, I’m more curious about the contestants. Namely: what the gen Z, or even gen Alpha boys auditioning for Cowell understand their roles in the new show to be.

In their heyday, Cowell’s reality shows were an early precursor to the now common idea of mining your life for content, and I remember very clearly him telling me what a problem it became once contestants realised they’d have a better chance of being picked for X Factor or America’s Got Talent if they had a strong backstory. “I once had a guy,” Cowell said, “who came rushing out on stage and literally shouted, ‘I’ve got cancer!’ Like it was great news. He was so happy that he had a sad story.”

The difference these days is that even if the young men competing on Simon Cowell: the Next Act make similar calculations, their social media accounts alone ensure they will have a greater ownership stake in their own stories than their counterparts of the mid-2000s. (Cowell hates phones and claims not to read anything online – augurs well!) The bigger question is whether he can get a face that, like Jeremy Paxman’s, seems in its resting state naturally to describe incredulity, to do something warmer and more friendly, as the era requires. And there it is – the impetus to watch the first episode.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist