When it comes to making gripping TV often all you need is a shaky relationship, a few skeletons in the closet, and high stakes. When placed in the hands of great actors, it usually equals a winning formula.
Apple TV+’s new series Disclaimer delivers on all of those, and throws in some seriously beautiful cinematography to boot. This is hardly surprising given that five-time Academy Award winning Alfonso Cuarón, who directed Gravity and Roma, wrote and directed Disclaimer, and once again he leans heavily into the visually stunning.
Our main character is Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). She’s a journalist with a nose for sniffing out secrets others want to keep hidden – until the same thing happens to her. A book drops through her letterbox by an author she doesn’t know, and with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”
Wouldn’t you know it, the main character is a thinly-veiled version of her... right down to the secret from her past she’s been trying desperately to bury. A secret that, naturally, explodes out into the open, and threatens to destroy Catherine’s life along with it.
Soon, she’s trying to navigate the fallout of the scandal while reckoning with its effects upon her family. In this instance, Sacha Baron-Cohen shines as her cuckolded and disillusioned husband, Robert, alongside Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nicholas, Catherine’s underachieving son. Lesley Manville and Kevin Kline, who play a couple with an axe to grind, lurk menacingly on the fringes.
The interplay between the past (where a younger Catherine’s holiday to Italy takes a dark turn) and various versions of the present is where things get murky, because the narrative jumps around a little. It’s not exactly disjointed but there certainly isn’t a clear thread tugging the viewer through those first few episodes.
That aside, it is visually impressive. The scenes shot in Italy, sepia-tinted vignettes that slowly come to haunt Catherine, particularly benefit from Cuarón’s eye as more and more of the people from the past are caught up in the fallout of the book’s publication.
It’s worth mentioning the wealth, too. It’s intensely present. It’s in the house Catherine lives in (so much marble, so much space), in her wardrobe, even in the huge glasses she uses for the wine her husband – an aspiring oenophile – so loves. This fits the story, but are viewers beginning to be a little weary of uber-wealthy characters trying to hide their scandals à la Anatomy of a Scandal or Big Little Lies?
And, sure, there’s hardly anyone who’s ever entered into matrimony who wouldn’t empathise with the narrator’s line “marriage is delicate, not just yours, but all marriages. There’s a balance to maintain, and you think you’ve succeeded in keeping yours on course…”. In all other respects the central characters seem a world away from relatable.
No matter. It’s stylish, slick, sexy. And, as we all know, those things in tandem make for a compelling to watch.
