Sometimes spoilers can be your friend. For example, I have just cheated and looked up on the internet the shocking final plot twist in Disclaimer and now I have been relieved of a massive burden. No longer need I watch any more episodes of this weird, creepy, pretentious, contrived and prurient series just to see how it ends.
You find yourself hating everyone and everything in it – even the cat
On paper it all looks promising: based on a bestselling novel by Renée Knight (Lee Child says in a quote on the cover that it’s ‘exactly what a great thriller should be’); adapted and directed by fêted Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron; starry cast headed by Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, with a potentially intriguing appearance by Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) playing it completely straight as Cate’s cuckolded husband…
The problem is that even before the end of episode one, you find yourself hating everyone and everything in it. ‘Even the cat!’, said the Fawn. And it’s true. You do hate the cat. Though I’m quite sure in real life it is a perfectly affable creature, on screen it looks too much like a trained TV cat going through the motions for a handful of Scrumbles being offered just out of shot.
The cat’s stilted behaviour, however, is of a piece with the mood generally. Most of the cast, not just the ones from Australia or the US, speak English as if it were not their first language, perhaps out of misplaced respect for the Spanish-speaking director. It’s like watching a Pinter play on the BBC in the 1970s, only with a bigger budget and fancier settings. Am I meant to be unsettled or is this really lame and embarrassing – or maybe a bit of both?
Every scene, every location, feels almost there but not quite, and raises all sorts of awkward and possibly irrelevant questions.
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