What if the next book you opened was about you? Not a biography. Not a tribute. But a sharp-edged, slow-burning account of your darkest secret, written by a stranger who seems to know far too much. That is the premise of Disclaimer, the new Apple TV+ limited series directed by Alfonso Cuarón, based on the novel by Renée Knight. The show opens with that premise and then moment-by-moment it peels back layers of trauma, guilt, projection, and perception with the precision of a scalpel.
You may know Cuarón for his Oscar-winning work in Roma or the technical bravado of Gravity. This is the acclaimed filmmaker’s first collaboration with Apple TV+, and not the last. Good. Let the streamers’ prestige wars open a new chapter.
Page-Turner to Slow-Burner
Based on Knight’s debut novel, the show unfolds like a literary mystery with the pacing of a European arthouse thriller. Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), an award-winning investigative journalist and documentarian, receives an award THEN a novel anonymously. It takes her about two minutes to realize the book is about her – her past, her family, her most closely guarded secret. Her previously controlled, seemingly perfect life begins to unravel.
From there, Disclaimer becomes a slow-boiling game of narrative telephone. But instead of whispers, there are long-held grudges, suppressed memories, and the occasional scathing monologue. Think The Night Of meets The Hours, with a touch of Gone Girl, but way more emotionally repressed.
Cate Blanchett: A Portrait of a Woman Unraveling
It is perhaps unsurprising that Blanchett’s Catherine is both commanding and crumbling at once. This is Blanchett in full control, yet giving us glimpses of a woman losing it. Her eyes do most of the work in the early episodes – a flicker of recognition, a dash of dread. And she gets more and more disheveled as the pages (and episodes) turn.
But it is not just Blanchett carrying the show. Kevin Kline delivers what might be a career-defining performance as Stephen Brigstocke, a broken, lonely man whose pain seems to echo louder with age. It’s a raw, almost eerily quiet portrayal. You feel the weight of his many losses in every sentence, each movement. There’s nothing theatrical about it. Just heartbreak, honestly rendered.
Then there’s Sacha Baron Cohen – yes, that Sacha Baron Cohen – as Catherine’s husband. Keep calm, this time he is fully dressed and ready to tackle some serious drama. The casting seems left-field until you see it in action. His character is slick and controlled, with a pitifully low self-esteem.
As for the overall acting – well, it fluctuates. Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing in the quieter moments, but her big monologue in the final episode feels emotionally unearned, even rushed, and somehow just detached. The intensity that carried us through the earlier chapters dims when we need it most. It’s not just Blanchett. The ensemble feels increasingly restrained toward the end, as though the emotional core of the show had been slowly siphoned out. What starts as a tightly coiled, sexy psychological drama begins to fray around the edges – partly due to source material limitations, but also, it seems, from fatigue.
The Supporting Cast That Steals Scenes
Except for Lesley Manville. Naturally, because she is Lesley Manville – the kind of actress who seems to have emerged fully formed from a Shakespearean subplot. Whether she’s playing a suburban wife or a grief-stricken mother, she’s always 100% believable. In Disclaimer, she’s a chameleon again, shape-shifting with the elegance of someone who never lets you see the seams.
Cody Smit-McPhee, best known for his eerie stillness in The Power of the Dog, brings a similar fragility to Nicholas Ravenscroft, Catherine’s son. He’s the emotional barometer of the series, the one who hasn’t quite learned how to suppress his feelings like the adults around him – but who already has a second, and potentially a third life as well. He quietly spirals down similar to Catherine’s fall both publicly and on a personal level, and his performance lingers. He is addicted to a multitude of drugs, left school young, is mostly in-between jobs, lonely and troubled. He manipulates his naïve father and hermits from his sharp-eyed mother.
Projection is a Hell of a Drug
Cuarón has said in interviews that by the last chapter, he noticed that he had been projecting his own assumptions onto Catherine while reading the book. That’s the point, really. The first six episodes are designed to make us uncomfortable with Catherine’s decisions – low-key hate and look down on her – to align us with those characters who are too pointing fingers. Then comes the seventh episode, which flips everything. Suddenly, we’re forced to question our judgments. Turns out, the most unreliable narrator might be the one in our heads.
That final twist isn’t just clever; it’s necessary. It reminds us that we rarely see the full picture. Our biases shape our stories. Our traumas color our conclusions. We judge and project, it is in our nature. And somewhere along the way, we often forget to show empathy and ask the most important question: what really happened?
There’s a lot going on thematically here: fame, reputation, cancel culture, motherhood, grief, and above all, perception. Cuarón doesn’t spoon-feed his messages.
But perhaps the boldest aspect of Disclaimer is its moral murkiness. There is no clear hero here. Catherine is not likable in the conventional sense. Robert is not really sympathetic or loving either. Stephen is struggling but does things, which cannot be justified by any measure of pain. Everyone is compromised. That’s the point. The show asks us to sit with discomfort, to examine our own reflexes.
Submeans and More Sunbeams: The Visual Signature
For at least the first six episodes, Disclaimer is visually stunning – at times so painterly it verges on devotional. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography, supported by input from Bruno Delbonnel, leans into the same sun-dappled lyricism we saw in his collaborations with Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life comes to mind). Golden-hour light bleeds through gauzy curtains. Dust particles float like secrets in the air. Characters are often bathed in glows that feel like oil-paint brushstrokes. It’s poetic, melancholic, and deeply deliberate. The beach scene with Jonathan’s parents arriving to identify his body are especially evocative – frames you could freeze and hang in a gallery. But as the series moves into its final stretch, the palette flattens. Suddenly it’s a lot of desaturated gray, green, and the familiar prestige-TV tracking shot vocabulary. The style doesn’t collapse, but it does tire. One tracking shot follows another.
Why It Matters Now
In 2025, with our lives curated into online narratives and judgments served in comment threads, Disclaimer feels especially relevant. We are all, in some way, managing the story others believe about us. And when that story spirals out of our control? Well, cue the anxiety.
The show’s tagline, “The past always finds you,” might be a little melodramatic, but it holds true. No matter how carefully we curate our present, unresolved truths have a way of resurfacing. The question is not whether they will – but how we will respond when they do. How authentically we dare to take hold of our own narrative.
Disclaimer is currently streaming on Apple TV+. Viewer discretion advised, especially if you’ve got a secret you thought you buried for good.
~ by Dora Endre ~
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