Apple Cider Vinegar follows Belle Gibson, the real-life convicted scammer who founded a wellness empire based on alternative medicine. The series is an interesting character study as it paints Gibson in different shades, which Dever brings so much life into. Here she’s an exploitative scammer, tech visionary, psychopathic liar, hustler, and mother all rolled into one, so it’s not as easy as hating or feeling sorry for her character. Along with Gibson, we also follow Milli (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), actual cancer patients battling the sickness in their own ways. At times, the show takes on a Mean Girls tone as Milli and Belle go head to girlboss head, but the show is at its strongest when it softens up and gives the women space to feel their specific pains. The show is sharp, entertaining, and moving enough, but I do wish it didn’t have to bury its message in layers of satire. It revels too much in that gray area between alternative living and pseudoscience when it should’ve made the dangers of the latter explicit.
"All of it comes together mainly thanks to a terrific performance from Dever, Australian accent and all, whose take on Gibson is instantly familiar and unnerving."
— Proma Khosla
"With each episode, it loses momentum in saying something important, instead becoming a practice in exercising empathy towards a broken and inherently flawed woman."
— Kaiya Shunyata
Two young women advocate for wellness remedies to cure deadly illnesses, unraveling their lives as they unknowingly — and knowingly — mislead the world.
Accused of fraud and lying about her cancer diagnosis, wellness guru Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever) tries to resurrect her reputation with the help of a PR firm.
Dever is excellent here, arguably a career-best performance.
It can be confusing and frustrating (no amount of time stamps can smooth out the timeline) but a timely, important message and a rousing set of performances make it worth the watch.
