Renee Knight Disclaimer is a difficult book to adapt, a prestige soap opera carefully divided into two arcs: a man seeking revenge against the woman who destroyed his life, and the woman trying to keep her family together during the attack. It cuts back and forth between these halves in an almost whiplash-inducing manner, often with chapters consisting of only a few pages. And that style is largely repeated in the first episode of Alfonso Cuarón’s excellent Apple TV+ drama of the same name, although it adds a third arc: a flashback that captures the events that connect these very different people. It is a daring narrative approach (uSurprisingly from the man who directed Oscar winners Gravity And Roma), but it totally works, leaving viewers unsure of where their loyalties should lie or even the true motives behind these characters and their many, many secrets. Ultimately, this is a project that lives up to the prestige of the production, one that brings some of the most acclaimed artisans and artists to perhaps the only streaming service that can afford them.

The performance is uniformly excellent, but the power of DisclaimerThe film’s two-part premiere takes place in the production, an edit that flows seamlessly across timelines with unique color palettes, spoken POVs and tones. The opulence of one existence is offset by a somber aesthetic in a house shrouded in sadness, and both stand out against a flashback of bright sunshine and grinning youth. Photographed by the masterful duo Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel, Disclaimer reminds us how non-existent the line that used to separate cinema from television has become. It looks absolutely amazing, perhaps better than anything not mentioned on TV in 2024 Ripley.

The first chapter of Disclaimer draws a lot of power from the triptych structure, but that’s hard to summarize, so let’s look at each individually:

In the happiest period, even though we know it will collapse, a young couple travels around Italy, where they are seen making love for the first time on a train in a shot that already showcases the sharp imagery of this show. The couple turns out to be young Jonathan Brigstocke (Louis Partridge) and Sasha (Liv Hill), but she is forced to return to London after her aunt dies in a car crash, leaving Jonathan alone in one of the most beautiful and romantic countries in the world. After a trip to Pisa, he ends up on the Mediterranean, where he meets the young Catherine (Leila George), there with her son Nicholas after her husband returns to England. We will learn that Jonathan and Catherine had enough of an affair that it would lead to steamy photos that would go off like a grenade many years later, but not exactly what happened to poor deceased Jonathan.

Many years later, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) receives a copy of a book in an unaddressed envelope. “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not coincidental.” The disclaimer should give her pause. One wonders if she also hesitated upon seeing “To My Son, Jonathan,” as we will learn that this is a name she knows well.

Reading The perfect stranger Later that evening, Catherine is rattled so badly that she vomits before attempting to burn the book in the sink as if it might be the only copy in existence. She hides the truth about what the book reveals from her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), but admits that she thinks it is about her. An unseen narrator—mimicking the fact that Catherine’s chapters in the source are in the third person while Stephen’s are in the first person—sums it up: “Your mask has fallen.”

Catherine turns to her son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), whom she feels guilty about for distant parenting and pushes him out of the nest to find his own way. We learn that he works in a department store and can barely communicate with his mother, refusing to relive happier memories of his childhood or even put down his phone while they unpack in his new home. When he later reveals that he too received a copy of it The perfect stranger Handed to him by what he assumed was a grateful customer, he mentions that the main character dies at the end of the book that Catherine was too scared to finish. And that the “selfish bitch” deserved it. Yes.

The third arc of the premiere belongs to the memorable Stephen Brigstocke (an excellently world-weary Kevin Kline), who is introduced deep into the apathy of the elderly, unconcerned about the students he has grown tired of teaching. After finally cleaning out the closet left behind by his late wife many years ago, he finds a bag with a key inside that unlocks the next chapter of his life. A drawer opens in which his wife Nancy has left a manuscript for Stephen to process The perfect stranger. She also left photos, the ones Jonathan took of a young Catherine during their Italian affair. It’s interesting to see how these photos connect dots in Stephen’s memory, saying, “I thought she was just a bystander to the downfall of my life.” The Stephen arc moves quickly through time compared to the other two as he self-publishes the novel and sets his plan in motion. “There was only one reader I wanted to reach,” he says, still wearing his late wife’s cardigan.

The second half of the premiere lasts much longer in each of the three still-defined arcs, giving it a different momentum, allowing us to linger in emotion rather than cause confusion. It’s an episode about a woman trying to protect her family from the truth, but we’re still unsure of all the details, leaving us wondering if we want Stephen’s grenades to go off or Catherine to defuse them. After all, even Nicholas thinks the fictional version of his mother deserved her fate.

After seeing the first meeting between a young Catherine and Jonathan that we’ve seen in photographs, the series’ longest scene so far connects Stephen and Nicholas on the day he delivered his book. Nicholas helped him buy a vacuum cleaner! But Stephen “couldn’t help noticing his impatience,” later calling him “a complete waste of space.” There is an interesting contrast between the cheerful, smiling son we see in Jonathan, compared to the brooding son played by Smit-McPhee. And it’s kind of funny that Nicholas still thinks he got the book from someone he “helped” rather than “barely tolerated.”

The second of three key scenes in this back half of the premiere takes place ten years ago, just before Nancy Brigstocke (Lesley Manville) died. Catherine went to meet her and we learn that Nancy said her husband was dead and her life was miserable. Catherine didn’t even come to Jonathan’s funeral – so this wasn’t just an Italian affair if Nancy expected to see her at the services. There’s a key line in this scene where Nancy says, “He saved your son.” From what? By WHO?

The main scene in chapter two opens with Catherine cooking dinner – Robert’s favorite dish, sole meunière – while her husband receives a package from Stephen consisting of another copy of the book and the photographs Jonathan took during his rendezvous. Robert recognizes not only his wife, but also the hotel room they shared, and his emotions explode so high that he begins to shake. Interestingly enough, he goes to his son to see what he knows, but Nicholas was too young to remember anything.

Robert finally arrives home, hours late and drunk, and confronts Catherine. He shows her the photos, but doesn’t really pause to listen to what she has to say. Could she reveal what really happened? It’s a raw, gritty, well-acted scene, especially on Blanchett’s part, as she struggles to match her words and emotions. She promises that Nicholas didn’t know, and she clearly wants to tell him something when he finds out Jonathan is dead. She thought she could get away with it. Not if Stephen Brigstocke has anything to say about it.

Stray observations

• • How prestigious is this cast? All five major players have an Oscar nomination! And Blanchett has eight! It is one of the most highly regarded ensembles in years. And then add the team of Cuarón, Delbonnel and Lubezki, and it gets a little crazy.
• • Why do you think Stephen uses Joseph Conrad’s real name when he almost buys a vacuum cleaner? Sure, it’s long enough to pass the time so he can post the envelope, but there’s also something about the way Stephen tries to unpack a real story. Heart of darkness.
• • The first line in an awards ceremony by Christiane Amanpour feels thematically essential to a story about how a book tears a life apart: “Beware of story and form.”
• • Stephen’s own publishing company is called Rhamnousia, an ancient Greek goddess also called ‘Nemesis’. Difficult, difficult Stefan.
• • Note that Stephen tells his story, an invisible omniscient narrator takes Catherine’s, and there is none for Jonathan. This is just one of the ways Cuarón delineates the threads.
• • I loved the part about how the joy of being a wine connoisseur comes from being able to afford it. It seems to be true of many expensive hobbies that are as much about displaying wealth as anything else.
• • Can we consider how often Cuarón works with strong female characters and the representations he borrows from people like Blanchett, Sandra Bullock and Yalitza Aparicio? He has an underrated gift in that area.
• • It will be interesting to see how long Cuarón/Apple has the full truth about what happened between Catherine and Jonathan. And will viewers be patient if it takes weeks to find out?