Written and directed by Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Roma), and starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Lesley Manville, Disclaimer has an unimpeachable pedigree. No amount of artistic talent, however, can salvage this seven-part series, which works when it embraces its pulpier instincts but unwisely opts, during its table-turning finale, to wag its finger at anyone who might have enjoyed its more thriller-ish aspects.
It’s a grave misstep compounded by plotting that’s both distended and, at times, preposterous. Still, if less than the sum of its parts, it does boast a delicious performance from Kline as a man on a mission of a most devious sort.
Premiering Oct. 11 on Apple TV+ and based on Renée Knight’s 2015 novel, Disclaimer opens with documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett) being feted at a gala by Christiane Amanpour—an immediate (if unintended by Cuarón) sign of her journalistic untrustworthiness. Catherine is praised for revealing “our own complicity in some of today’s most toxic sins,” and as it turns out, she’s believed by retired private school teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kline) to be guilty of a heinous offense.
