'Disclaimer' is yet another Prestige TV Disappointment
Visionary director Alfonso Cuarón's AppleTV+ series underwhelms
Happy Tuesday everyone! Today is an exciting day because I get to share something I’m very proud of: my first full-length, college newspaper article. For UCSB’s The Daily Nexus, I reviewed the AppleTV+ original series Disclaimer.
This was an enlightening experience in many ways, but here were my core takeaways:
Length: Back home I got comfortable writing my 500-600 word reviews, so the 700-900 mandate for The Daily Nexus took me by surprise. It definitely felt like a larger undertaking, but it was also a blessing. I got to go much further in my analysis and achieve a level of depth I couldn’t back home.
Edits: There are certain stylistic requirements for The Daily Nexus that I completely understand (they have to stick to AP style), but don’t necessarily love. I need my beloved Oxford comma! That’s why I’m providing you with my version of the review, which varies a bit from the published version. Consider it like a director’s cut of a film. Both theatrical and director’s cuts are equally valid, one just aligns slightly more with the creator’s original vision.
That said, here is the Disclaimer review (director’s cut):
Disclaimer should be an obvious slam dunk. An adaptation of the 2015 Renée Knight bestseller of the same name, the AppleTV+ series boasts perhaps television’s most esteemed creative team in years. However, despite the undeniable benefits of having multiple Academy Award winners working on the show, the limited series somehow manages to be a disappointing — dare I say, even old-fashioned — exercise.
First and foremost, it’s important to situate Disclaimer within the larger television landscape. With its typically exclusively movie-making creator, traditional movie star leads, sizable production budget, self-serious tone, and social justice minded focus, Disclaimer checks nearly every single prerequisite for the decade’s most pervasive television trend: prestige TV. Fueled primarily by the influx of new streaming services eager to fill their content pipelines with meaningful, eventized entertainment, prestige TV has become the dominant format for serialized storytelling on television (see Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, or literally any series Nicole Kidman has appeared in in the last half a decade).
Easily identifiable thanks to those aforementioned traits, prestige TV also tends to generate the same recurring problems in show after show. That’s because of a very basic fact: television and movies are two very different mediums. The two may seem similar, but they actually require very different structural styles of storytelling. That’s why when filmmakers with little to no television experience are tapped to create shows, disjointed and poorly-paced so-called “event series” are what follow.
It brings me no pleasure to report that with Disclaimer, even writer-director Alfonso Cuarón (Roma, Gravity, Children of Men), who happens to be one of the greatest living filmmakers on the planet, can’t escape the prestige TV trap. The series may begin intriguingly, with a strong conceptual hook and mesmerizing rhythm, but it doesn’t take long for the effect to wear thin. Each chapter of Disclaimer lacks a discernible narrative structure and feels unnaturally stretched to fit a longer runtime. Not only that, but the non-linear construction of the plot quickly grows tiring. There’s definitely delight to be found in its Rashomon-esque varying accounts of the same event, but not if viewers recall that the same trick has been accomplished before and better (see The Last Duel). As with most prestige TV, it’s impossible not to wonder how much better Disclaimer could’ve been as a tightly-paced, streamlined movie.
The show is not without its charms, however, as the allure of Cuarón’s directorial style is impossible to completely erase. His iconic use of long takes pair nicely with Disclaimer’s stunning color grading, naturalistic lighting, and richly detailed, austere yet lived-in production design to create easily the best-looking show on television. If nothing else, the series is at least a feast for the eyes.
Similarly, there’s a primal thrill in witnessing one of our greatest actresses doing her thing. Disclaimer follows Catherine Ravenscroft, a high-strung, upper class journalist who begins to unravel when she receives a novel which threatens to reveal her darkest secrets. As a master at playing high-strung, upper class women unraveling (see Blue Jasmine and Tár), Cate Blanchett makes a meal out of this role. As does Kevin Kline, who faced a high degree of difficulty selling the increasingly machiavellian persona his character adopts. In fact, Disclaimer’s entire cast (with the exception of a sorely miscast Sacha Baron Cohen) is operating on such a high level that it’s hard to not at least find some level of enjoyment here.
These positive qualities fight to counteract Disclaimer’s most prominent flaw: the narration. This series features some of the most ridiculous, overbearing, unintentionally comedic narration in television. Any sense of nuance or interiority is stripped away in exchange for on-the-nose, perpetual voiceover that only serves to verbalize what’s already apparent. Not only is it annoying, but it tips the show’s already self-serious disposition into almost unbearable pretension. Disclaimer has a serious identity crisis. It treats a soapy, melodramatic, almost Almodóvarian narrative as dour, be-all end-all gospel. The show takes itself so seriously it becomes tedious, failing to grasp the inherent joke lying within the ridiculousness of its credulity-straining plot. Simply put, Disclaimer leaves viewers no option but to laugh at it instead of with it.
To some extent, this tonal approach is understandable. Disclaimer grapples with a heavy subject matter that’s better tackled with respect than irreverence. Disclaimer’s central thematic core is a good, even important social justice idea, but it’s just too little too late. Considering the social movements of 2015 when Renée Knight’s story was published (forgive my vague wording, I’m tiptoeing around spoilers here), Disclaimer (the book) probably felt revolutionary. In 2024, however, the conversation has moved far past this story’s capability to comment. Disclaimer (the show) is unfortunately AOA: antiquated on arrival.
There are other issues as well. Stilted dialogue and a perfunctory ending deepen Disclaimer’s flaws. Ultimately, the show is a beautifully made, well-packaged misfire from a creator who has never misfired before.
If that’s not a clear mark against prestige TV, I don’t know what is. If Alfonso Cuarón can’t salvage it, maybe it’s time to retire the formula. Hopefully the studios take notice.
The theatrical cut of this review can be found in the 11/14 issue of The Daily Nexus. That version can be read here.
Disclaimer is available on AppleTV+