Apple Cider Vinegar (2025)

The critic praises the series as a fast, witty and furious dramatisation of Belle Gibson's story, highlighting Kaitlyn Dever's masterly central performance. It is commended for balancing understanding of the character's flaws with condemnation of the harms caused by wellness misinformation.

The critic deems it necessary viewing in an era of misinformation and health scammers, praising its smart, timely take on post-truth culture through the Belle Gibson story. It highlights the agile production style, fourth-wall breaking and strong performances, especially Kaitlyn Dever's.

The attention-gripping miniseries embraces the surreality of the central lies without minimising the harm and heartbreak they caused, offset by well-pitched black humour. Kaitlyn Dever excels at conveying both the charming public persona and colder private side of the lead character.

The review calls it a superb depiction of the wellness blogger who faked cancer and an innovative retelling that shows how and why the fraud occurred. It succeeds through a sensational performance from Kaitlyn Dever and its focus on truth, lies and misinformation.

The glossy Netflix series about wellness influencers and deception offers plenty to enjoy thanks to its polished telling and magnetic central performance from Kaitlyn Dever, who captures the jittery, charming energy of the lead character. It decentres the main scammer effectively to highlight the tragic stories around her and shows empathy for why people fall for such claims.

The series offers a compelling look at a serial scammer through Kaitlyn Dever's convincing performance as Belle Gibson, blending farce with real teeth in its tale of lies and fame. It contrasts wellness delusions with mainstream medicine while underscoring the ongoing relevance of misinformation.

The series lays bare the devastating impact of online disinformation through its depiction of convicted scammer Belle Gibson. It presents an enraging portrait of a wellness guru who faked cancer.

The series benefits from Kaitlyn Dever's compelling lead performance as Belle Gibson but delivers a soapy, surface-level take on wellness culture and social media with timeline-jumping structure and familiar scammer tropes.

The limited series provides only skin-deep insights into the influencer industry and Munchausen syndrome despite strong performances from Dever and Alycia Debnam-Carey; it is an addictive but frustrating watch that feels like a slow-motion car crash.

Despite a strong central performance, the series ends up muddled due to an unfocused structure that fractures the narrative over time and fails to settle on a framing device, diffusing its message about wellness culture and medical misinformation. It surrounds the lead with composite characters that tend to muddle rather than augment the points being made.

The based-on-a-true-story drama veers all over the place in time, tone and theme, serving up a little bit of everything but not enough of anything to fully sink its teeth into, making it feel scattershot and a bit stale. Dever's performance is persuasive, but the psychological portrait doesn't run deep and the multipronged approach gets frenetic without pushing hard enough on its smarter ideas about a toxic system.

The Netflix series rehashes a familiar scammer story with structural flaws, over-explanatory dialogue, and superficial treatment of wellness culture and social media, adding little new insight beyond typical streaming fare.

The critic finds the limited series a compelling, knotty tale that deftly combines true crime, drama and thriller elements into a timely reminder about the dangers of trusting social media wellness stories. It praises the strong central performance and nuanced exploration of the characters involved.

Strong performances, especially Kaitlyn Dever's layered portrayal of the fraudster, elevate the emotional true-crime drama focused on victims, but structural issues and a slow-building first half blunt its impact and leave it short of its potential.