Disclaimer, Apple TV review: Cate Blanchett leads an instantly addictive show

Near the start of Disclaimer we hear the following: ‘Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.’

The twist in the familiar legalese catches Cate Blanchett’s Catherine Ravenscroft in an insidiously sprung trap. Printed at the front of a book posted to her home, the mysterious tome – dedicated to ‘Jonathan’ – so alarms the garlanded documentary filmmaker that she sprints from the bed she shares with milquetoast husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) to deliver a shock-induced vomit to her ceramic toilet.

Thankfully, this tired spew-trope is the only predictable moment in the opening episodes of Oscar-winning Roma director Alfonso Cuarón’s sizzling adaptation of Disclaimer, the best-selling book of the same name by debut author and documentarian Renée Knight.

‘Beware of narrative and form,’ intones a presenter at an awards ceremony where Catherine receives a trophy in the show’s opening moments. ‘Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate.’

Knight, whose biography bears a striking similarity to Catherine’s, is toying with us on multiple levels. Catherine’s alarmed because the protagonist on the page – who several readers declare ‘deserves it,’ whatever her fate might be – uncannily resembles her.

The shocking plot spoils a terrible secret she’s been guarding for 20 years. One she thought she would never have to face the consequences for, as the only other person she believed could expose her is dead. But that’s only half the problem, because someone knows.

Disclaimer: IYKYK

In an upending of spoilers, we do, too, or at least the who.

Kevin Kline, who picked up an Oscar for beloved British comedy A Fish Called Wanda, plays bitter old fella Stephen Brigstocke. A cunning conniver who leans into his later years as a cloak of harmlessness, he’s fond of wearing his late wife Nancy’s moth-eaten pink cardigan.

Recently fired from a posh school for something he said to a student, we discover along with him while stewing at home that Nancy penned an unpublished manuscript. Gathering dust in a drawer, it appears to implicate Catherine in the death of their son, Jonathan (Louis Partridge), while on an Italian holiday two decades ago.

Watch the Disclaimer trailer.

Out for revenge, Stephen convinces a former colleague (Art Malik) with delusions of publishing to help him secure a small run of the manuscript, claiming it as his own but printed under the nom-de-plume EJ Preston. Hence Catherine’s distress, with yet more evidence coming into focus.

We’ll come to understand that Nancy (Lesley Manville, who does not miss while hissing) confronted Catherine in a cafe a long time ago, but the filmmaker ran away. But how do we know Nancy’s version of events is the truth? More to the point, how did she know?

Disclaimer: nine(ish) years later

Around nine years later – timelines are as deliberately loose as all the other threads unravelling here – a discombobulated Catherine almost confesses to Robert in their architecture porn-forward London pad they share with an astoundingly beautiful cat.

Robert mistakes her distress as concern over chilly relations with their 24-year-old son, Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee, another Aussie feigning plummy Brit alongside Blanchett), a ‘disappointment’ working in a homeware store. What does he recall of the Italian dilemma when he was but a boy?

It’s a conundrum that spins Catherine to her wit’s end, all the while Stephen’s circling her family one-by-one, chucking bombs both metaphorical and mimed by Kline.

If all this feels like a lot to reveal in a review, trust me, it’s barely scratching the surface of what’s rapidly unveiled in this instantly addictive Apple TV+ tease of a miniseries. Silken-toned narrator Indira Varma, an omnipotent tea-spiller, readily clues us into the key players’ motives while withholding the real mystery: what actually happened?

But Varma has competition, with multiple characters all too eager to let us inside the darkest corners of their mind, as if reading their flickering thoughts off the page.

Disclaimer: prestige trappings

Veneering a polished marble sheen, Disclaimer has all the prestige trappings of a location shoot in Italy and a starry cast steered by Oscar-winning writer/director Cuarón, but at its heart, it’s as one with soapy Nicole Kidman-led thriller The Perfect Couple.

That’s no bad thing. Blanchett’s just as gifted as her countrywoman at playing flinty characters with shifty morals and too much to lose, including her feigned accent. Cohen’s Robert is a manbaby trust-fund type with nefarious business dealings lurking under the surface of his charitable NGO, as entertainingly compromised as Liev Schreiber’s hubby in Jenna Lamias’ Netflix hit.

Everyone’s having so much fun from the off. Heck, Gemma Jones makes a mark despite only being heard on the phone as Catherine’s mum in a show that revels in being intriguingly obtusely.

That includes the portentous knock-knock of a score by actor, producer and Billie Eilish’s brother, Finneas O’Connell, and Disclaimer’s brace of lauded cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki (Cuarón’s Gravity plus Children of Men) and Bruno Delbonnel (The Tragedy of Macbeth).

The latter pair wink knowingly at what we do not know, with James Bond-like Iris shots zooming in on briefly glimpsed scenes, just as Jonathon voyeuristically trains his camera on a younger Catherine (Leila George for the Aussie hat trick), kid in tow but Robert no-show, 20 years ago.

Cuarón tightens the noose Knight tied with glee. Caught between the pages and in the shutter’s frame, you’ll be dying to know where this magnificently twisting show goes.

Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October 2024.