Fans of Cate Blanchett and Alfonso, unite! The acclaimed actor and director are teaming up for a new psychological thriller on Apple TV Plus, and you can watch its unsettling, mysterious first teaser below.
Titled Disclaimer, the series will premiere exclusively on Apple‘s streaming service in mid-October. And, while the show’s primary trailer doesn’t give too much away about its plot – it opts for an enigmatic, ominous approach rather than a expository one – Apple isn’t making us wait for more details on Disclaimer’s story.
Its foreboding first footage notwithstanding, the tech giant has also provided a handy story brief, which you can read below, on what to expect from the forthcoming show.
What is Apple TV Plus’ Disclaimer series about?
Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Cuarón, whose other credits include the inventive 2013 sci-fi flick Gravity and the semi-autobiographical 2017 Netflix movie Roma, Disclaimer is based on Renée Knight’s best-selling novel. In it, The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy alumnus Blanchett plays acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, who has, per Apple’s press release, “built her reputation revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. [However,] when she receives a novel from an unknown author, she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets.”
“As Catherine races to uncover the writer’s true identity, she is forced to confront her past before it destroys both her own life and her relationships with her husband Robert and their son Nicholas.”
Joining Blanchett in front of the camera are Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as Robert and Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men: Apocalypse), plus other notable names – whose character identities are yet to be revealed – in Lesley Manville (Harlots, Back to Black), Louis Partridge (Argylle), Leila George (Animal Kingdom), and Hoyeon (Squid Game). Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, Doctor Who) will also be the narrator.
A thrilling push into a new filmmaking genre
Arguably the most underrated platform among the world’s best streaming services, Apple TV Plus has struggled to convince consumers to sign up to it over its more popular rivals. Despite this, it’s pumped out some of the best TV series we’ve seen in the past few years, including puzzlingly great sci-fi series like Severance, comedy gems like Shrinking and Ted Lasso, and recent thriller hits such as Presumed Innocent and Lady in the Lake.
It’s the latter duo and, by proxy, Apple’s curious push into the thriller genre, which has particularly caught my eye recently. As I mentioned, there have been plenty of top-tier Apple TV shows lately, but there’s no denying that the tech giant has made a name for itself in the sci-fi genre. You only need to look at Severance, Foundation, For All Mankind, Silo, and countless other examples as proof of that. The fact that many of them feature on our best Apple TV Plus shows list is further evidence that Apple has the market cornered for rich sci-fi storytelling, too.
That said, its subtle shift towards greenlighting more thriller-based content suggests that Apple is trying to muscle into another genre territory, which has largely been dominated by the likes of Netflix, Max, and Prime Video. Indeed, in 2024 alone, it released six new thriller-centric TV shows, none of whom have suffered the indignity of earning a Rotten Tomatoes critical score below 71% – in fact, three of them currently hold ratings above 85%. Not bad going for a streamer that has struggled to compete in a crowded market.
As more viewers become obsessed with thriller-based stories, it makes sense for the world’s leading streaming companies to invest more heavily in this genre of storytelling. If Apple can position itself at the forefront of the conversation with new, talent-filled, and potentially excellent series like Disclaimer, it might just give people another reason to switch up the platform(s) they’re subscribed to.
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