Kaitlyn Dever makes this wellness-fraud drama worth watching, giving its central liar an unsettling plausibility. The attention paid to people harmed by misinformation matters, though the restless structure keeps interrupting the people we want to understand.
Apple Cider Vinegar is an engrossing, uneven drama about a wellness fraud, worth watching for Kaitlyn Dever’s Belle Gibson. Across six episodes, it tries to explain the appeal of a woman who claims to have cancer while keeping the harm of her deception in view. That is a worthwhile choice for a scammer series: the people who believe the lie deserve attention too. The difficulty is that the programme keeps changing its approach before the people around Belle have quite had their say.
Dever understands how tiring it can be to watch someone working this hard to be liked. Her Belle is eager and charming in public, with a private coldness that makes the charm increasingly uncomfortable to witness. We were angrier than we expected to be, because the warmth she uses to win trust is so convincing. Dever makes it possible to understand why somebody would listen to Belle without making the deception any less repellent.
Alycia Debnam-Carey, as Milla Blake, gives the series another performance strong enough to compete with Dever’s. Moving attention away from Belle gives the people harmed by such claims a place in the story. The writing by Samantha Strauss, Angela Betzien and Anya Beyersdorf is strongest when it takes seriously the desire to believe a reassuring health claim. Fear makes that desire comprehensible, and the series is kinder to those who fall for misinformation than the genre’s appetite for exposing gullibility might suggest.
Jeffrey Walker directs, with music by Cornel Wilczek, and the glossy presentation suits a story about people being persuaded by appearances. The fourth-wall breaks make the telling playful, while the black humour allows some welcome irritation with the business of selling reassurance. Those choices work when they expose the effort that goes into being believed. When they crowd together, however, the series can seem too pleased with how entertaining it has made the fraud.
The larger problem is the jumping through time, which repeatedly interrupts our attention to the characters. Too often a change of direction asks us to catch up without making anyone’s behaviour clearer. Strauss, Betzien and Beyersdorf have plenty to cover, but the shifting structure makes their priorities difficult to follow. We wanted some stretches to settle long enough for a conversation or a consequence to carry its proper weight.
The limits become clearer when the programme turns from Belle to the wider culture that rewards her. It recognises the attraction of wellness promises and the authority a persuasive online personality can acquire, but its explanation of that authority stays fairly familiar. In this kind of crime drama, charm can take up so much attention that the businesses and audiences rewarding it receive only a quick inspection. The surrounding stories help, though they cannot answer every question the script raises about health and trust.
That leaves a series we would recommend to anyone drawn to dramas about deception, with a warning about its restless telling. Dever gives Belle enough recognisable human behaviour to make watching her uncomfortable, and the attention paid to those harmed prevents the subject becoming a simple exercise in spotting lies. Watch it for Dever, with some patience for the interruptions.
