“Beware of story and form,” Christiane Amanpour says of one of our protagonists, acclaimed documentary journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), in the opening minutes of Apple TV+’s new series “Disclaimer.” “It can bring us closer to the truth, but it also has the great power to manipulate.” Alfonso Cuarón’s seven-part limited series for the streamer, adapted from Renee Knight’s 2015 novel, is indeed a masterpiece of form; the purpose of the story is, of course, manipulation. Not just the characters, mind you, but also the audience, who systematically unfolds a dual story of delicious revenge, and the joy with which we both participate in and witness it. And, like so many previous Apple TV+ series, it will be a beautiful tapestry woven by one of our incredible filmmakers, with top talent in front of and behind the camera, that will undoubtedly be seen by too few because of where it is streaming.

When we first meet her, Ravenscroft is on top of the world: she has a fawning husband, Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen, stone-faced and submissive), a healthy, if unambitious and troubled, son, Nicholas ( Kodi Smit-McPhee), and a robust career at the top of her field. But all that threatens to fall apart when a book arrives on her doorstep: ‘The Perfect Stranger’, with a disclaimer that Catherine uses carefully: ‘Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.’

The more she reads, the more she recognizes: the main character is her, who tells an unpleasant chapter twenty years ago, when she (Leila George) had an affair with a much younger man, Jonathan (Louis Partridge), while on holiday in Italy with Nicholas, then a toddler. We learn that Jonathan later died saving Nicholas’ life, giving Catherine the perfect excuse to keep her chatter a secret. Thanks to this book, her life and reputation may now be thrown into turmoil.

And who is responsible for such a tumultuous tome? Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), an over-the-hill private school teacher and Jonathan’s father. Where Catherine’s life is one of glamor and prestige, his is a humble, run-down existence; his wife, Nancy (Lesley Manville in flashbacks), has died a few years earlier, and he shuts himself off from the world, lost in her remaining belongings alongside nude photos of Catherine that corroborate the story. It is Nancy who wrote the manuscript, an assumption based on those photos and what she knows of the events. When Stephen finds it in a faraway drawer, he decides to have it published – to punish the woman responsible for destroying his family.

Fair warning, dear reader: “Disclaimer” is not a cozy watch. In seven chapters we witness the demise of a woman and the devilish glee with which a bitter old man deals with it. Cuarón’s lyrical script and elegant direction play with anticipation and assumption, sucking you into one perspective before flashing to another. (Visually, there are shades of the warm, hands-on sexuality of “Y tu mamá también” in the hazy, soft-focus flashbacks to Italy, the prolonged gloom of “Children of Men” in the contemporary pieces; cinematographers Bruno Delbonnel and Emmanuel Lubezki give seemingly the visual stick between them.) It feels like you’re watching a war; with each new copy of Stephen’s book landing in the hands of a new friend, lover or colleague, we see it land like a bombshell in Catherine’s life. In response, she becomes increasingly defensive, unable to explain away her crimes, which only increases her guilt in the eyes of her accusers. And then we cut to Stephen, barely hiding the grin of a Cheshire cat as his trap closes tighter and tighter.

Both Blanchett and Kline are superlative in their roles, orbiting each other like a binary of white-hot resentment. Shades of “Tár” clearly abound in Blanchett, who plays yet another powerful woman lashing out at her own unexpected cancellation. But Kline subtly plays with Stephen’s channeling of grief (his strolling around the house wearing Nancy’s moth-bitten pink cardigan, her favorite) in the “Oldboy”-esque long game he wants to play with Catherine.

It is unrelenting, and deliberate; ‘Disclaimer’ is a portrait of pain and the fingers we point when we should direct that pain elsewhere. Frankly, it also points the finger back at us, and at the Stephen-like joy we and others can derive from seeing someone we consider inferior. bad get their just desserts. Sometimes, it is said, we are happy to join the cheering crowd, even (or especially) if it gives us the opportunity to take down someone of privileged character. But all this grimness can sometimes get you down; there’s no lightness to really soften the blow, especially as it spirals towards its inevitable, table-turning conclusion. I don’t see much room for escape, apart from the steamy eroticism of the Italian flashbacks (filtered through the subjective narrative of the novel within a story), the glimpse of a steamy affair whose impact ripples through decades of grief and secrets.

But no one comes to “Disclaimer” looking for solemnity, and you won’t find it either. Instead, it’s an elegantly woven tapestry of torment that grabs you by the head and forces you to stare at the train wreck of two people’s lives, caught in the flow of pain. What’s worse is that you see in razor-sharp detail how the drowning will pull everyone around them under the current in despair. After all, it is said that before you take revenge, you must first dig two graves.

Entire series are shown for review. First two episodes now on Apple TV+.