Disclaimer review: Twisty Cate Blanchett show is a head-spinning thriller

Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron assembles a cast of top-notch performers for his TV debut

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nicholas Ravenscroft, left, and Cate Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft in Disclaimer. Photo: Apple TV+

There are many storytellers in Disclaimer, the latest psychological thriller by Apple TV+. But whose story is most convincing? And does your choice of whose narrative you best believe reflect who you actually are as a person?

Two-time Best Director Oscar winner Alfonso Cuaron offers this tantalising premise in the seven-part series. Assembling a cast of top-notch actors, including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville, Cuaron brilliantly tackles questions about subjectivity and truth, deliberately clouding the audience's perceptions at first, then questioning the very conclusions we make by starkly laying out the reality in the end.

Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, a documentarian who, at the beginning of the series, is honoured for her work in exposing inconvenient truths. One day, she receives a book by an anonymous author, which refers to a tragic incident in Italy 20 years prior that she had wanted hidden, and sends her life into a tailspin.

We soon find out that the book's publisher is Stephen Brigstocke (Kline), a retired professor, who's recently lost his wife Nancy (Manville) to cancer. Before her death, a grieving Nancy had written a manuscript, detailing the circumstances of her beloved son Jonathan's death by drowning while on holiday in Italy. In it, she squarely implicates Catherine for the death, arriving at that conclusion from intimate pictures of Catherine she later finds in Jonathan's camera.

Heartbroken with nothing left to lose, Stephen then sets out on a vengeful mission to slowly dismantle Catherine's life, first by destroying her reputation, then her marriage, and finally, her already frayed relationship with her teenage son Nicholas, played by Oscar-nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee.

Flitting between Catherine's story narrated in second person and Stephen's narrated in first person, we are offered several perspectives as the story progresses. The timeline also cuts back and forth to Italy, where in sequences from the past we meet a younger version of Catherine (Leila George) and Jonathan (Louis Partridge), and to the present, where Stephen is mercilessly and gleefully doling out his recrimination.

Soon, the timelines meet and the narrations take very different turns, both ending tragically.

Blanchett is excellent as an accomplished and assertive woman who can't seem to find the words to explain one specific incident to anyone, while Kline as her grief-stricken nemesis is a joy to watch. As a young Catherine left alone in a foreign country with her young son, George is flawless in her vulnerability, while Partridge plays his part with such assertive confidence, that it's hard to look away. And Manville delivers a heartbreaking turn as a woman who spirals into depression following her only son's death.

But the master storyteller here is Cuaron, who writes and directs all seven episodes, an adaptation of Renee Knight's 2015 novel of the same name. Twisty and provocative, he lays out all the puzzle pieces with intriguing detail, dares you to put it together and then offers a completely unexpected and heart-rending ending. What a ride!