Imagine you’re a respectable, accomplished person at the top of a glamorous industry. You receive awards for making politically progressive documentaries that raise awareness about the social issues of our time. The point of your documentaries is that everyone is “complicit” in some of the worst problems, and everyone applauds your moral compass. But even while accepting accolades at Awards Shows, a thought lingers at the back of your mind: you know you have a secret so damning, it could ruin your life. And so, you live each day hoping it stays hidden. This is the scenario explored in Disclaimer. The new Apple+  drama stars Cate Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft, an iconic documentary filmmaker whose life is turned upside down when a mysterious manuscript shows up at her home.

When the anonymously authored text appears at Catherine’s chic London home, she realizes it chronicles the misdeeds that could obliterate her good name. And Catherine has a lot to lose. In addition to her career, she enjoys a relatively happy home-life with her handsome wine-loving husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and their immature but sweet adult son. Catherine knows neither who wrote the upsetting text nor what they want. Most terrifying of all, she doesn’t know where they might share the story next…

Adapted for the screen and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Disclaimer is equal parts glossy prestige TV and creepy psychological thriller. When the devastating text appears at Catherine’s home in the pilot, we the audience do not know what Catherine’s secrets are. Instead, her sins unfold slowly, over a series of expertly paced flashbacks.

For the viewers, Disclaimer is ostensibly a thriller about what Catherine did wrong. But it is also about solving the mystery of who Catherine is. Is she the socially aware filmmaker who makes iconic documentaries? Is she the loving but self-identified “shit mother” who is too harsh on her twenty-something son? Is she the villain the mysterious manuscript makes her out to be? And is it possible to be all of those things at once?

Leila George portrays Catherine competently as a bored young mother in the series’ many flashbacks. However, it is Blanchett’s performance in the present-day timeline that is truly remarkable. Blanchett is unafraid to play a wholly unlikeable person – someone as self-centred as she is talented. While Catherine is aware her secret could torpedo her career and destroy her family, she gives far less thought to the fact that it already has blown up other people’s lives. Before the manuscript appeared, one wonders how she was able to thrive for so long in the face of what happened? Is Catherine a sociopath? Or would most of us embrace denial if we were the instrument in someone else’s tragedy?

Both Blanchett’s performance and Cuarón’s script revel in Catherine’s contradictions. At one moment, the beautiful filmmaker is confidently strutting across her office, boasting about plans to adapt her docs into narrative cinema. However, when she first reads the manuscript that details her past sins, the usually cool professional has the energy of a wounded animal. “I’m being punished,” she wails, as a baffled Robert stops her from incinerating the document in their kitchen (the contents of which he is still blissfully unaware).

Rounding out the cast is the always brilliant Kevin Kline and the equally talented Lesley Manville. The veteran performers portray the Brigstockes, a nice middle-class couple whose life has been transformed by loss. Much of the story is told in a voice-over by Kline, who, after a series of family tragedies, is left with only himself to talk to. I could watch Kevin Kline portray a mild-mannered retiree turned under-the-radar stalker all day!

Disclaimer is beautifully shot, superbly acted, and exceptionally plotted. However, an underrated element of most psychological thrillers is the score. In Disclaimer, composer Finneas O’Connell’s foreboding music makes even shots of an idyllic Italian beach feel eerie. Not since 2014’s Gone Girl has a score built tension so exquisitely in a psychological thriller. I plan to play the soundtrack at my next Halloween Party!

In an era where so much TV is formulaic, Disclaimer is a pleasantly propulsive and disorienting work of television. The limited series will have you clamouring for more, which is exactly the sort of scintillating TV we’ve seen too little of since Succession wrapped. While Apple TV has fewer subscribers than HBO or Netflix, this reviewer hopes Disclaimer will find its audience. We could all use more art in our lives…