'Disclaimer' revenge thriller series on Apple TV

Trailer.

From the trailer...

[quote]a 7-part [bold]event[/bold]

Cuarón seems confident. He's also said he was thinking about re-editing it into a movie, so it could qualify for the film awards as well. This better live up to the hype.

Looks interesting.

When do it come out?

Agreed, the lighting is gorgeous (and not constantly so underlit that you have to squint to see what's happening). Hope the story is its equal!

r4 First two episodes out October 11, weekly releases after that.

It looks fun but so can tell already that 7 episodes will be 3 too long as is always the case in TV adaptations of domestic crime potboilers.

It’s not The Thornbirds or Shogun.

Episodes 3 and 4 -- Leila George is gorgeous. And she's Vincent D'onfrio's daughter. Reminds me of Peggy Lipton.

What's the early verdict on this one? Worth a re-sub to Apple TV Plus?

I'm enjoying it -- good but not compelling or must watch. Not sure if it's worth the $ to re-sub to Apple but I'll probably watch the new season of Silo after this finishes.

Thanks, R10, I'll probably wait until all of the second season of Severance is online next year for a re-sub!

Just caught up with the fourth episode and I'm more with the critics on the lower end of the spectrum, I really don't know why this did so well at the film festivals. It's all a bit flaccid, there's just not much meat on the story once you get past the cinematography. And some of the writing is really up its own ass. The heavily ADR'd flashback scenes in Italy are a bit of a slog.

I guess it's worth watching for the long takes with the inquisitive kitty who keeps fucking up Blanchett's marks. She has to wrangle that damn cat, keep composure, and then continue with her lines. I'd go crazy if I were an actor. But apparently they introduced that kitty as an agent of chaos on purpose, to make the scenes come across more hectic in order to mirror Catherine's unravelling.

I also enjoy Indira Varma's pleasant narration – even though its overall effect is probably a net negative as it more often than not just spells out what's on the screen already – and Lesley Manville's acting, which I didn't think much of prior to this. Sacha Baron Cohen is pretty decent in this as well, have never seen him in a dramatic role before. Klein is Klein, he's okay.

Why don’t you just subscribe for a single week and binge it?

bump

Just finished the fifth episode, it's all getting quite dark and nasty now. I find the Kline character lowkey revolting at this point and I think I'm slowly getting what Cuarón is exploring with this show – at what point does revenge go overboard and become more deplorable than the original act itself?

More spontaneous kitty acting!

I can't stand any of the characters but Catherine, thus far, is the least offensive. Both Catherine's husband and Kevin K's character are simply awful. I'm rooting for the Russian Blue cat.

There is some very odd dialogue involving Gay Icon Kylie Minogue in the 3rd episode..lots of "what would you like to do to Kylie?" etc. It cracked us up watching it.

I just finished episode 4. I’m liking it but not clear on how the parents knew the details of the affair with Catherine or why they blame her/think she’s so terrible. Hoping that all gets addressed.

What did she do?

Won’t somebody tell what she has done??

I'm glad there's just one more episode left, I had to FF through Kline's scenes in the sixth episode, his character is irredeemably odious, he makes me want to vomit. Lesley Manville with another great scene.

I'm basically just watching for the kitty at this point. There was a scene in the latest episode where Cate runs around the corner into another room and the cat runs right next to her and my heart skipped for a second. No idea where they got that little devil but they hit gold with it.

I was inclined to watch it but the read a review in The New Yorker (which is generally reliable) saying "it's a work of such vacuity that even Cate Blanchett can't salvage it."

r19 She fucked a teen while on vacation with her kid (her husband returned home early). Kid starts drowning, teen saves him, teen in turn starts drowning and Cate just watches him instead of alerting other people to what's happening. By the time they get to him, it's too late.

Well, my GOODNESS!

[quote] Cate just watches him instead of alerting other people to what's happening.

But how would the kid’s parents in London know that? It makes no sense.

Yes, that's what Cate asks his remaining parent in the penultimate episode. The finale will reveal what's actually happening and I've heard it's quite the twist.

#TheCatDidIt

Another boring and esoteric Cate Blanchett project.

The first couple episodes seem to set up a different twist (that the spoiled, rudderless unhappy kid is really Jonathan's).

Blanchett always seems so sexless. No wonder they had to make her a vixen in flashbacks with another actress.

Multiple cats: The Blue at Blanchett's house, the Ginger at Kline's, and less visible one at the demented mother's. Blanchett can't escape cats.

I like Kline better in comedies, but it's difficult to turn away from his human trainwreck here-disheveled as he is and wearing his wife's cardigan.

I can not stand Cate Blanchett or Kevin Kline

Just finished the last episode and my god, what an epic misfire this show was. I don't know whose farts those cunts at the Venice film festival were sniffing when they praised this to high heaven, but we really need to stop listening to them. This is an extremely basic melodrama (verging into soap territory), absolutely drenched in cinematic panache. It's like Cuarón read this novel on a plane once, orgasmed at the "No, Mr. Ravenscroft, why didn't you?" line at the end, and decided to score some brownie points by making a MeToo show.

Also, I don't mean to be a bitch, but he's a Mexican director single-handedly adapting a British novel when he really needed someone else to write the script for him. It's like he copy-pasted whole chunks of the book – narration and all – into the script and called it a day. Some of the dialogue at the end was just painful to listen to.

Kline's character was VILE, haven't been this repulsed by a fictional character probably since Joffrey in GoT. The delightful cats were the only good thing about this show. And some of Manville's acting. And the young actor showing his taut toosh, of course.

Variety

This may be the only one of Kline's roles that I can honestly say: what a shitbag cunt.

He was exactly like that cockroach he trapped in the glass. And no, what he did at the end didn't redeem him one bit, should've leapt into that fire himself.

I had read the book a few years ago and found it to be meh. I enjoyed the show but some of it was ridiculous. My neighbors would have called the police if I had a midnight bonfire in my backyard.

I was very impressed with Kevin Kline's accent. I'm a Brit and most of the time American actors never quite get it right. His was flawless.

It'll come out years from now that this whole show was just a vehicle for those cats and everything else was constructed around them. Because without the cats, this show is the biggest pile of dreck in recent memory. Also, that scene where the cat knocks over a photo should be taught in acting classes everywhere – Cate reacts, adapts, and incorporates the cat's action into the scene.

r37 Yep, I'm not a Brit (not even a native speaker), but I grew up on British TV and have an impeccable ear for various accents and dialects, and his really was excellent. I didn't know he had it in him!

Spoilers below: I just finished it and I thought it was utter horseshit, only made initially interesting by the contorted editing. Mind you, I do hate Grand Guignol. By halfway through it was ostentatiously clear that nobody was letting Catherine give even a word of explanation, and that not a single reader who blamed Catherine ever questioned how Nancy could have known all that detail (much less why Nancy was so obsessed with her dead son's sex life). So when Catherine did explain it was obviously going to turn the story on its head. Which it did, in a maximally unconvincing way, yet everyone believed her instantly even though Nancy's story hung together much better. Also, there were warnings about physical, psychological and sexual violence at the start of each episode, but we didn't actually see any (unless we count Bridgeport's stalking) until the last episode, so it was pretty obvious where it was going.

It was choc-ful of "Who would do THAT?" moments, such as when Catherine, especially given her past experiences, (a) thinks she can go around to her crazy stalker's for a nice cup of tea with no thought he might try something, and (b) when she wakes up after he HAS drugged her and doesn't get the hell out of there as fast as she can. Not to mention when young Catherine casually leaves the key in the door of a hotel room in a foreign country. What woman alone for the first time with a child would ever do that? And then, at the end she keeps phoning Robert, who she knows won't answer her calls, but doesn't think to phone the ward. Not to mention that in ICU the nurse patient ratio is 1:2, so they should be watching Nick closely anyway. As for Catherine's "forensic evidence"--what, had that moved house several times with her? Where did she keep it?

At the end, when she tells Robert she's leaving him because he was happier with the version where she was raped than the one where she had pleasure in the affair: surely the main thing all the readers of the book, including Robert, were censuring her for was not intervening in Jonathon's death for selfish reasons? In the version where she was terrorised and Nick threatened with disfigurement, her actions on the beach become understandable instead of murderous. Any husband would be happy about that turn of events. Another thing: if I'm not mistaken, in Nancy's version the pair have an affair for several days in Italy, yet in Catherine's version the day she first sees Jonathon and the day he dies are consecutive. If the latter is the case, then surely Robert, who knows when he left Italy and when Catherine came home, would spot the discrepancy in Nancy's story?

It was very anodyne that Bridgeport simply concluded that Nancy had always covered up for Jonathon and he's therefore repudiating them both--though apart from the dark inferences around the first girlfriend, immediately before Catherine met Jonathon, we were never given any clue to what might have needed covering up. Nancy's obsession with her son, visible in the way she lived after he died and in the story she spun from the photos, strongly suggested child abuse, but I'm not sure Stephen drew that inference, or that we were supposed to. Certainly Jonathon appeared to have inherited sociopathy from both parents.

I thought all the leads gave performances ranging from blameless to impressive, but the characters and script couldn't have been much crappier. I can't imagine the novel was much better, because the whole plot creaks with contrivance.

[quote]yet in Catherine's version the day she first sees Jonathon and the day he dies are consecutive.

She said she wanted to go to the police the next day and then the day after that, and kept putting it off. And then she saw him die. So it was several days in both versions.

[quote]By halfway through it was ostentatiously clear that nobody was letting Catherine give even a word of explanation

Definitely the most frustrating thing about this show, by far. In fairness, all of that could have been avoided if Catherine just said immediately, "It's all nonsense, he raped me." But all we get from her is just this constant state of being distraught, verging on hysterical, for most of the show. I wanted to slap her so bad.

No, R40, she distinctly said the reason she fell asleep on the beach, allowing Nick to get lost at sea, was because of what had happened to her the night before.

She said she was not in a condition to talk to the police, but thought she might in a day or so--but she was saved from having to think anything more about it because he died. Yet she implied she could present Bridgeport with the forensic evidence, including jizz and photos of her injuries, so we have to assume she'd been carrying it around with her for 20 years yet somehow keeping it all away from the husband and son living with her.

I agree with your other par, but I didn't want to slap her, I wanted to slap Cuaron.

I guess I’m in the minority since I actually enjoyed it. But I do have lots of questions. How did Nancy know Catherine had seen Jonathan drowning and did nothing? That’s a big leap to take and a lot of blame to randomly put on a stranger without anything to back it up. Why did Sasha leave Italy early? This is dropped on us like there’s a twist there but then never followed up on. Catherine saying she had evidence made know sense either because shortly after she says she destroyed it all. So in reality she has no evidence at all. It also makes no sense that Jonathan is a psychotic rapist but also willing to risk his life to save a drown king child.

A bouquet of excellent questions, r42. We're meant to empathise with Catherine in that big reveal scene, but she has zero evidence to support her version of the events.

She also says she and Robert wanted a kid so bad when she gets to the abortion part. But you already have a kid? So why not just make another one?

I found myself hoping Nicholas would not make it, no non-villainous character has ever deserved it more. He was a walking caricature of Gen Z entitlement: spoiled, insufferable, and entirely unprepared for the fortune he’ll one day inherit. No depth, no charm, just a terrible attitude and even worse behavior. Watching him survive felt like a complete letdown.

But are we meant to feel sympathy for him? In the final moments, we get the big reveal: as a child, Nicholas witnessed the horrific assault on his mother back in Italy, one summer long ago. Are we supposed to think that trauma explains, or even excuses, the way he turned out? It’s like the film asks us to re-evaluate his character, as if witnessing that violence somehow justifies the entitled, toxic adult he became? I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

r44 found himself hoping Nicholas would not make it, no non-villainous character has ever deserved it more.

Guy playing Jonathan is apparently Olivia Rodrigo's latest beard.

R42: I believe eyewitnesses told the police that she did nothing. Nancy constructed her story from what the police could tell her and the pictures.

I think what happened with Sasha is left to our imaginations. Given that the parents had those two uncomfortable phone calls with her mother and Jonathan was revealed to be a rapist, then we can guess that it was something awful. Even so, Sasha may have felt guilty for leaving him in anger (hence, no further contact). Their going at it like animals is probably Nancy's construction.

The big reveal in the end seems like the kind of dime store Freud that was common in 50s and 60s melodrama. It was traumatic and puzzling to Nicholas, but it also would have affected Catherine's ability to be a mother and wife, explaining their reconciliation. The confession that reveals all also seems a bit old fashioned. If the characters were more three dimensional or at least a little likable, maybe that would have worked better. I re-watched Gosford Park after this, looking for something a bit more entertaining and the story telling is so much better--people are odious but somewhat likable or farcical and the ending is a deduction by a protagonist and not some messy reveal.

The ending does tie things up too much in a bow. There is no real proof, which is a plot hole. Jonathan's death probably destroyed whatever passion there was in Nancy's marriage. One wonders what fantasies she had about her own son and where that nonsense about Kylie comes from, although that was the only humorous thing in the whole film. Manville's pathological attachment to her son and the weird fantasies it engendered would have worked better if she had more screen time for us to see more inklings of it in her character. It would have helped us understand whether Kline was overcome with grief of=r whether he had always been a creep.

I didn’t like the way the “twist” was presented. Blanchett played the character as so cunty for 5 straight episodes that it was clear that the novel’s version of events had to be false, because why would she otherwise play such a one note bitch?

I watched 3 minutes but all I saw was people fucking on a train. Turned it off.

Sasha and Jonathan were more obnoxious than charming.

I assumed when Jonathan’s obsession with Kylie Minogue was mentioned, he would turn out to be gay. Then I assumed that she modelled the pictures for him as a way to get back in touch with her body as a harried young mother, and the drowning was a legitimate accident.

Her career continues to go down the shitter.

Nicole Kidman would have been better suited to this role as she can portray sexuality better.

So, are supposed to believe that the guy who brutally raped her the previous evening went to rescue her son in the ocean the next day. Seriously? Why would he stick around after he did that.

Also, there were photos of her flashing him on the beach. Why was she doing that if she was raped? He raped her and spent the next day close to her on the beach? Yet, she was sooo relaxed she fell asleep. It makes no sense, full of holes. The consensual situation makes much more sense.

R54 she wasn’t flashing him. She was trying to remove sand her son had poured on her that had gotten under her bikini. She hadn’t realized that he was filming her just like his mother hadn’t realized that he was filming her until she went through his things and found those black and white creepy pictures.

I assume he brought the son out into the water and then when he was out pretty far threw sand in her face to wake her up, but he misjudged his own abilities.

It started out slow and confusing, but then I watched another episode and was drawn in, until it eventually became a hate watch. But THEN, eps 6 & 7 pulled me out of the hate-watch into full on camp watch.

Like others, there was just too many plot holes.

1. How did the mom know THAT much??

2. Why didn't Cate just fucking say she got raped? Just say it. Explain why she kept it a secret for so long. There was zero reason for it go on longer than one minute once she knew the novel existed.

3. Her getting drugged by Kline was beyond ridiculous.

That said, I did enjoy the ride. Even if it was bumpy as hell.

1) she didn’t. She just created a story from the pictures and she didn’t even get the order of the pictures right. (Unless you are talking about all the sexual technique detail stuff. I’m stumped about that as well, given the lack of chemistry in her marriage)

2) totally agreed.

3) agreed, but most of his behavior was inexplicable towards the end.

4) why doesn’t the former headmaster friend of Kline realize the novel is about his son? That is what I found the most odd.

1.) She lived in a fantasy world and probably read too many trashy novels.

2.) It's not easy to do.

3.) I think we're meant to see him as becoming deranged with the loss of his sone and wife, although given that enmeshed relationship between mother and son, one wonders whether those relationships sustained him ever.

4.) Educators are often idiots, esp. the ones in administration.

The coffee drugging was straight out of Agatha Raisin And The Quiche Of Death.

I thought Kevin Kline was the hammiest actor ever, but then I saw Cate Blanchett in Disclaimer.

Ugh I thought it was terrible

Overacting across the board

[quote]I believe eyewitnesses told the police that she did nothing.

They wouldn't have. They would have said she was totally absorbed in her kid who had nearly drowned. Since nobody knew she had any connection with Jonathon, that's exactly the behaviour everyone would expect.

[quote]I assumed when Jonathan’s obsession with Kylie Minogue was mentioned, he would turn out to be gay.

Back in the 1990s, when those scenes took place and Kylie was in her twenties, she was an object of lust for tons of British straight guys. A pin-up who would routinely get voted "Sexiest Woman Alive" and suchlike in the 'lad mags' of that time, such as Maxim and Loaded. She didn't really become a gay icon until she aged out of the Stock/Aitken/Waterman stage of her career and her wholesome "Neighbours" image--I guess when she was in her thirties.

It’s excellent, great actors, Kline is brilliant. It’s intense. Hard to believe it has only 77% on Rotten Tomatoes.

R64, it was when she dated Michael Hutchence. That's when she cut off her hair and started dressing sexy in RL.

She claimed that he was interested in art, culture and politics and loved to teach her things. She credited him with really bringing her out into the world, like a highly sexed version of the Baron at the cordon bleu school in Sabrina.

R64 Not so, Jonathan had the “Light Years” poster of Kylie on his wall from 2000. This tracks because Nicholas is 5 year old at the time of the Italian trip.

This is mid-era Kylie. Not even the start of mid-era Kylie. She had long been a gay icon.

2000 was the era of Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Sarah-Michelle Gellar, Katie Holmes, even the pre-Douglas Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Sacha Baron Cohen follows the pattern of silly comedians who have serious dramatic acting chops. He was outstanding.

R53: The lack of passion was the point of what we saw. Blanchett always seems sexless, so perfect casting. Kidman's animatronic appearance would have been a distraction.

It was excellent. It kept me on the ledge of my couch. Kevin Kline’s character is one the scariest and saddest I have seen in years. All actors were very perfectly cast, also Cohen. The London Cinematography was outstanding. The Asian office bitch who betrays her as soon as she sees a chance felt very real. The scenes in the hospital were haunting. Bravo!

Interesting how all the feminist left-leaning critics hated it.

I did not think Cohen was good in this role at all. I think it may have been because his lines were so hammy. If you want to see him in an excellent role, check out The Spy, an espionage dramatic thriller from 2019. He is outstanding in the role.

A lot of the male bro critics were less than impressed too.

R70 Kevin Kline walked away with the show.