APPLE CIDER VINEGAR – Limited Series (2025)
The life of a wellness guru who had a large social media following, where she pretended to be suffering from cancer but kept the disease under control using self-care therapies.
Over the last decade, television true crime documentaries have proved immensely popular. Netflix shows like Making a Murderer (2015), The Keepers (2017) and Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (2019) were largely responsible for kick-starting this trend, and seemingly, audiences can’t seem to get enough of them.
This glut of true crime TV isn’t surprising, after all, for as long as televisions have been in existence, there have been series featuring criminals. The cinema, too, has had a love affair with movies that feature a plot seeded in nefarious activity; this genre has been the mainstay of popular culture for as long as, well, at least the last hundred years—novels arguably going back further to the time of Edgar Allan Poe in the 1800s. And so, it’s even less of a revelation to now see a growing collection of dramatised true crime stories appearing on the streaming schedules. However, out of this genre, there seems to be a new strand—or sub-genre—emerging and gaining traction, and that’s stories about women who all fall into the, shall we say, ‘less than completely honest’ category.
From this recent batch of female-led crime features, there’s been Inventing Anna (2022), which starred Julia Garner (Ozark) as Instagram-legendary heiress Anna Delvey, who stole vast sums of money from the wealthy in New York City, and The Dropout (2022), that covered the disgraced biotechnology company Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried (Jennifer’s Body). Now, following those two fraudulent females, comes Belle Gibson’s remarkable ‘true-ish story, based on a lie’ in the form of Apple Cider Vinegar.
Adapted from the 2017 book The Woman Who Fooled the World by Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, the journalists who actually uncovered Gibson’s lies, this screen version tells how young single mother Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever) accumulated millions from pretending to have brain cancer while promoting alternative medicine via her wellness recipe app and cookbook, The Whole Pantry. Meanwhile, actual cancer sufferer and health guru influencer Milla Blake, has grown suspicious of Belle after she loses out to her at a Cosmopolitan magazine entrepreneurship award ceremony, so she does some digging on the internet and discovers that Belle pretended to be sick as a teenager, faking a heart attack and claiming to have leukaemia. After further incidents along the way—one involving Milla’s friend Chanelle who also has her suspicions about Belle—a pair of journalists start investigating Gibson and reveal that, not only has she never suffered from cancer, but she also embezzled money that was supposed to be for a child’s experimental cancer surgery.
As you can tell, this is quite the story; one that covers several years, events and multiple characters—and so it’s testament to the skill of its principal screenwriter Samantha Strauss that the series’ narrative bounces back and forth across different timelines, at sometimes breakneck speed, to almost giddy effect. Boring, it is not. Yes, one could argue that these continual time changes can start to stretch your patience after about three episodes in, but for the most part it also helps to create a slightly lighter—and almost surreal—tone to the proceedings.
The first couple of episodes start about two years into the story where our main protagonist Belle has just been found out and so she’s seeking the help of crisis manager Hek (Phoenix Raei) to try and work out some strategy for saving her. Different people and time periods all move at a pace, and, of course, it’s here where we really get a good idea about Gibson’s character and what makes her tick. Needless to say, it doesn’t take too much screen time for anyone possessing even just a modicum of decency to realise that this seemingly down-on-her-luck single mum is seriously lacking any form of moral integrity, and will do anything to not only survive—including treading all over anyone who she perceives is getting in her way.
While a good script will take a series so far on its merits alone—more on that in a moment—there have to be some strong actors thrown into the creative mix too in order to really keep the momentum going, while also adding a degree of dramatic heft and believability, and so I’m happy to say this show’s list of quality acting talent is well above average.
Leading the way front and centre is American actress Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart). Despite her character’s many flaws, Dever still manages to give her onscreen alter ego a small degree of likeability over the course of the series, thanks to a performance that’s all charm, sassiness, and a touch of vulnerability on the surface, yet at the same time, giving off an air of don’t-mess-with-me toughness. Apart from the drama, Dever can do funny too; there’s a scene showing Gibson’s book launch where she starts singing Katy Perry’s “Roar” that will have you both giggling and cringing at almost the same time.
Equally strong acting chops are on display courtesy of Alycia Debnam-Carey (Fear the Walking Dead) as Gibson’s ‘competition’, in the form of journalist-wellness influencer Milla Blake. This Aussie performer displays the full gamut of emotions with apparent ease, and gives off a fully-rounded turn that is never anything less than convincing. For the most part, you’re on her side—especially given her struggles with cancer throughout—but her character makes some decisions that have catastrophic consequences later on, and seeing her reactions when things go south is impressive. There’s even one sequence that might shock you in the way she behaves to a seemingly casual event, but I won’t say anymore except that it’s powerful.
Aside from the two leads, pretty much everyone that’s featured in the story gives decent performances—but my two final standouts are Ashley Zukerman as Belle’s partner Clive, and Mark Coles Smith as journalist Justin. Both characters are anything but predictable, and how they’re portrayed is always entertaining and thought-provoking: the end result being that they perfectly complement the rest of the story, and its cast.
Circling back to the screenplays: maybe more of an impressive feature than the already mentioned time-jump narrative is the way that, shining through all of Belle’s storyline which cleverly criss-crosses through multiple characters and their lives, there’s a subtle yet strong spotlight on the alternative medicine business. And we’re shown both sides: honest / well-intentioned, and, well, Belle’s side of the equation. What’s perhaps more disturbing is that even those people going into it with good intentions can still cause irreparable harm to those around them.
Depending on your point of view, you may disagree with what changes the writers have made to actual events, just for dramatic licence; most notably, Milla’s character being based on someone called Jessica Ainscough, who was a cancer sufferer and wellness influencer, but didn’t know Belle at all. However, when these creative changes to the truth are handled as well as they are here, and that they serve the story so well, I think a few historical inaccuracies are okay.
Outside of the acting and writing, Apple Cider Vinegar’s got some great technical merits to boast of, not least from its series cinematographer Toby Oliver who shows off the exotic Australian locations perfectly with plenty of light and primary colours shining through his keen lens. And lending a hand or four to the furiously fast narrative timeframe jumps is the next-level precision editing by Annette Davey and Mat Evans. When you witness for yourself how quick some of the cuts are, with one even showing a conversation featuring the same people in two different locations, you will understand what I mean.
Take away this series’ sheen of polished dramatic entertainment, what you’re left with is a fast-paced and witty viewpoint on important themes such as exploitation, self-deception, and how social media can turbo-charge all this to dangerous heights. Okay, at times its slickness can make everything come across as a little glib or insincere, but that aside, I feel everyone concerned had the best intentions here, and given the expansive storyline and many characters involved, what could have been a plodding, boring mess, ends up being the exact opposite. Highly recommended.
AUSTRALIA • UK | 2025 | 6 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH
Cast & Crew
writers: Samantha Strauss, Anya Beyersdorf & Angela Betzie (based on ‘The Woman Who Fooled the World’ by Beau Donelly & Nick Toscano.)
director: Jeffrey Walker.
starring: Kaitlyn Dever, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Aisha Dee, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Mark Coles Smith, Ashley Zukerman, Susie Porter & Matt Nable.
