Now that Disclaimer, written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is finally streaming on Apple, we can at last really talk about it. Not all episodes have been let out, so I'll try not to give too many spoilers, but I'm pretty sure my colleagues have already ruined everything at Venice.

Disclaimer: this is important, mainly because it's the first thing that Cuarón has made in seven years - he won the Golden Lion for Roma at Venice in 2018, then vanished. He subsequently began working on this series, but it took a million years to finally see the light of day. I suspect the pandemic played a role in that. Either way, this was a very highly anticipated series; Cuarón reunited with Chivo-Emmanuel Lubezki-and cast the queen herself, Cate Blanchett, in the lead-apparently a sure bet, but nope, nothing saves this show. Sadly.

The series follows a story about a successful journalist, Catherine, played by none other than Blanchett. She has a good husband, Sacha Baron Cohen; a troubled son, Kodi Smit-McPhee; a beautiful house in London; a successful job-everything seems to be going well. But one morning, she receives a package with a book in it-the story of her long-ago vacation in Italy where her husband had to interrupt the trip and return home for work, leaving Catherine alone with their five-year-old son. There, she met a 19-year-old guy. The results of that encounter are described in excruciating detail in the book. The mysterious stranger who sent it threatens to destroy Catherine's perfect life just as she once destroyed his.

The series explicitly addresses truth, its distortions, and variations. It is not a spoiler anymore to say that there is a big twist that changes the perception of everything that happened. But I must confess that, from a period in which social behavior towards victims is being re-conceived, when social roles are under reevaluation and everyone screams victim-blaming and male power, it's hard not to guess what the big plot twist is. I figured it out with the third episode, while it took four more episodes for the characters.

The agony of watching this, even leaving aside the mediocrity of the subjects touched on by the series, is unbearable. I am having a hard time saying this because Cuarón is my favorite director, and it really feels like one of those commercial projects he did just because he could. It did to him what Great Expectations did: an experience he does not like to remember. The series is from the book by René Knight of the same name, and Cuarón wrote the screenplay himself, but absolutely blew it. Almost every scene is either melodramatically voiced over to explain the characters' feelings-as I like to say, you could just read the book for that; in film or television, we should be showed rather than told.

Overall, Disclaimer proved way too melodramatic, and unfortunately, Lubezki's stylistically beautiful cinematography only enhances that melodrama. Even Blanchett becomes grating eventually. I never thought that could happen. Like most series of late, Disclaimer would have fit nicely into two hours, but since corporations gotta be corporations, they expanded this into seven episodes. #whattowatch

Now that Disclaimer, written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is finally streaming on Apple, we can at last really talk about it. Not all episodes have been let out, so I'll try not to give too many spoilers, but I'm pretty sure my colleagues have already ruined everything at Venice.

Disclaimer: this is important, mainly because it's the first thing that Cuarón has made in seven years - he won the Golden Lion for Roma at Venice in 2018, then vanished. He subsequently began working on this series, but it took a million years to finally see the light of day. I suspect the pandemic played a role in that. Either way, this was a very highly anticipated series; Cuarón reunited with Chivo-Emmanuel Lubezki-and cast the queen herself, Cate Blanchett, in the lead-apparently a sure bet, but nope, nothing saves this show. Sadly.

The series follows a story about a successful journalist, Catherine, played by none other than Blanchett. She has a good husband, Sacha Baron Cohen; a troubled son, Kodi Smit-McPhee; a beautiful house in London; a successful job-everything seems to be going well. But one morning, she receives a package with a book in it-the story of her long-ago vacation in Italy where her husband had to interrupt the trip and return home for work, leaving Catherine alone with their five-year-old son. There, she met a 19-year-old guy. The results of that encounter are described in excruciating detail in the book. The mysterious stranger who sent it threatens to destroy Catherine's perfect life just as she once destroyed his.

The series explicitly addresses truth, its distortions, and variations. It is not a spoiler anymore to say that there is a big twist that changes the perception of everything that happened. But I must confess that, from a period in which social behavior towards victims is being re-conceived, when social roles are under reevaluation and everyone screams victim-blaming and male power, it's hard not to guess what the big plot twist is. I figured it out with the third episode, while it took four more episodes for the characters.

The agony of watching this, even leaving aside the mediocrity of the subjects touched on by the series, is unbearable. I am having a hard time saying this because Cuarón is my favorite director, and it really feels like one of those commercial projects he did just because he could. It did to him what Great Expectations did: an experience he does not like to remember. The series is from the book by René Knight of the same name, and Cuarón wrote the screenplay himself, but absolutely blew it. Almost every scene is either melodramatically voiced over to explain the characters' feelings-as I like to say, you could just read the book for that; in film or television, we should be showed rather than told.

Overall, Disclaimer proved way too melodramatic, and unfortunately, Lubezki's stylistically beautiful cinematography only enhances that melodrama. Even Blanchett becomes grating eventually. I never thought that could happen. Like most series of late, Disclaimer would have fit nicely into two hours, but since corporations gotta be corporations, they expanded this into seven episodes. #whattowatch