Apple Cider Vinegar review: excellent cast, one bitter truth

Ten years ago, when Apple Cider Vinegar is set, the internet was a very different place. Influencers were new, whole markets were ripe for exploitation, and people actually thought what they were seeing on their screens was real.

Enter Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever), a twenty-something Aussie who built up an online wellness empire based on her miraculous survival after a brain cancer diagnosis, only to have it all fall apart due to the minor problem that she never actually had cancer.

Belle’s rise and fall took place a decade ago; there’s been a wealth of newspaper features, a series of 60 Minutes specials, even a book lifting the lid. That depth of coverage is replicated in Apple Cider Vinegar, a series that rapidly sketches the outlines of her scam and does a good job of showing the consequences of her lies, but occasionally loses the dramatic thread with a lot of timeline-jumping and repeated themes.

Watch the Apple Cider Vinegar trailer

There’s never any doubt that Belle is a fraud. An opening scene where she pitches a career revival to a crisis management PR expert (Phoenix Raei) does an excellent job of presenting her as a self-obsessed and fiercely determined/ outright delusional (take your pick) young woman who’s about as likeable in person as a bucket of snakes.

Her personal story is all about how someone like her could rise to the top, and what parts of reality – if any – were involved in her climb.

After establishing her as a superficially charming social media star, we step back in time a few years to meet the pre-fame Belle. She’s working at a call centre, shopping for organic produce (but buying no name brand supermarket items), and using her pregnancy to overwhelm shop assistants into giving her a refund. At least she makes her own cakes.

A little cancer lie on social media unleashes a wave of online support – in contrast to the real world, where she can’t even get anyone to show up to her farewell work party. She leans into it, her new persona is a smash hit, and before long she’s built a thriving business around her app, The Whole Pantry, and her uplifting story as a brain cancer survivor who cured herself through the power of, well, eating well.

Running parallel is the story of rival wellness blogger Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who has the big advantage of actually having cancer, but whose determination to embrace anything alternative that promises a cure (her doctors told her having her arm amputated was her best chance; by the time she agrees, things have got worse) makes for extremely uncomfortable viewing at times.

While Milla has a loving circle around her, Belle’s family isn’t exactly supportive: her mother (Essie Davis) can see through her because they’re peas in a pod, while her partner (Ashley Zukerman) is too weak to take a stand as the lies pile up.

Meanwhile, Blake’s childhood bestie Chanelle (Aisha Dee) ends up working for Belle, and when she sours on the scammer she becomes a source for Age journalist Justin (Mark Coles Smith). His partner Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) is a cancer sufferer herself; while he’s looking to take down the wellness empire, Belle’s message is exactly what she wants to hear.

This is a story about exploiting people at their most desperate and vulnerable, and every time the series’ peppy, upbeat style (designed to remind us of the ‘like and subscribe’ ethos powering these scams) steps back and lets that reality come through a much grimmer show emerges.

Apple Cider Vinegar: victims

The focus on the victims rather than the criminal gives this some much-needed heft, though ‘people will cling to almost anything that gives them hope’ probably doesn’t need six hour-long episodes to sink in.

Likewise, the insights this provides into people using their phones to get validation from strangers are totally valid but not exactly groundbreaking. It does a good job of outlining and explaining the culture that sprung up around then-new sites like Instagram, but when you lead a show about online influencers with Britney Spears’ Toxic you haven’t really left yourself anywhere to go.

Whatever the series’ flaws, the cast is uniformly excellent, with US actress Dever constantly compelling in a role that doesn’t leave a lot of room for being liked. For a story that’s firmly Australian – the Builder’s Arms on Melbourne’s Gertrude St even gets a cameo – and features a wealth of local talent in front of and behind the camera, she fits in seamlessly.

Even if she’s playing a tumor that needs cutting out.

Apple Cider Vinegar premieres on Netflix on 6 February 2025.

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