After two episodes of the lurid and twisted psychological thriller “Disclaimer” on Apple TV+, I was thinking: Boy, they’re really making us work to keep up with all this back and forth — but it’s intriguing!
After six episodes, I was poised to call this one of the best TV offerings of 2024.
After the seventh and final episode, which was jam-packed with more wild twists than the Raging Bull roller coaster at Six Flags Great America, I settled on a positive review, with some reservations.
Is it worth the time investment? Thanks to the cinematic direction and haymaker of a script from the brilliant Alfonso Cuarón (“Children of Men,” “Gravity,” “Roma”) and the dynamic performances from a stellar cast led by Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, absolutely. Will some viewers feel as if they’ve been plot-catfished by some of the hoary tropes and whiplash reveals in that series finale? No doubt.
As we noted in our review of the recent Netflix series “The Perfect Couple,” the surefire recipe for glossy, prestige-project limited series thrillers about privileged people in hot water includes the key ingredient of a best-selling page-turner from the 2010s, and “Disclaimer” stays true to the formula with creator-writer-director Cuarón adapting Renée Knight’s 2015 novel of the same name. (For those who have read the book, I’ll refrain from revealing whether it adheres to the plot.)
Blanchett’s Catherine Ravenscroft is an acclaimed documentarian who lives in a beautifully appointed London rowhouse with her adoring and wealthy husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen, playing it straight and playing it well), and as they return from a gala honoring Catherine’s work and a couple of glasses of vintage red wine, all seems well and nearly perfect in their lives.
Hold that thought. The premiere episode also introduces us to one Stephen Brigstocke (the great Kevin Kline, with a British accent that sounds like an accomplished American actor doing a British accent), a rumpled and eccentric former teacher who is convinced Catherine was directly responsible for the death of his college-age son some 20 years ago and was at least partially responsible for the passing of his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) many years after that.
When Catherine receives a package from an unknown sender containing a novel titled “The Perfect Stranger,” her reaction quickly shifts from mildly curious to horrified, as the book is a thinly veiled exposé accusing Catherine of hideous misdeeds two decades ago from a chapter in her life that she thought she had escaped. It’s no spoiler to reveal the novel was written by Nancy as she was dying from cancer, and that Stephen has had the book published as part of an intricate and depraved master plan to destroy Catherine.
With the use of the “iris in, iris out” transition technique that dates back to the silent era and has been featured in period-piece films such as “The Sting,” the series toggles back and forth between present-day London and a seaside summer resort in Italy some 20 years earlier. (The gold-hued cinematography in the flashback sequences perfectly capture the hazy, almost dream-like feelings of a somewhat faded memory.)
Leila George is stunning and strikingly memorable as the younger Catherine, who engages in a passionate affair with Stephen’s son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) while her husband is away on business. The first erotic encounter between Catherine and Jonathan is equal parts steamy and ridiculous (Kylie Minogue’s name is invoked multiple times, I kid you not), while the scene in which Jonathan drowns is so harrowing and terrifying, you find yourself holding your breath.
(We also see Kline and Manville in the flashback sequences, and the digital de-aging is so flawless that if you clicked across one of those scenes in “Disclaimer” and didn’t know it was a 2024 release, you’d think you were watching a movie from 2004 starring Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville. It’s uncanny.)
In present day, the formerly icy-cool Catherine begins to unravel as her husband, her sullen and troubled 25-year-old son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and her colleagues read the book and in some cases are provided with further evidence the affair really happened, and that Catherine is indeed responsible for Jonathan’s death. But as “Disclaimer” establishes at the outset, the truth depends on who’s shaping the narrative (the series has more than one character doing voice-overs), and it’s not until that quite mad final episode that all comes into focus.
At the core of it, “Disclaimer” is elegant trash. It’s the TV series equivalent of that juicy beach novel you bought at the beginning of last summer, the one that plunged you into a world filled with complicated and deeply flawed people caught up in a web of intrigue. It’s best enjoyed if you don’t check the Logic Meter readings too many times.