Margaret Lyons reviews “Apple Cider Vinegar,” a Netflix series about an Australian blogger who lied about having cancer.
The show stars Kaitlyn Dever as Belle Gibson, who rose to fame as a cancer and food blogger. It weaves her story with those of two other characters: Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a blogger idol who thinks she can heal her own cancer through juicing, and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), a breast-cancer patient desperate for alternatives to chemotherapy.
The series explores the wellness industry’s pseudoscientific practices, including “coffee enemas.” The story unfolds in jumbled timelines, focusing on Belle’s scams from her teens to 2015. Dever’s performance makes Belle sympathetic enough to reel viewers in.
“Apple Cider Vinegar” has more depth and bite than many other scam stories, exploring motivators like alienation and desperation. It’s not as polished as another recent documentary series, “Scamanda,” which airs on ABC Thursdays at 9 p.m. and focuses on the victims of cancer frauds.
Margaret Lyons is a television critic for The Times and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/arts/television/apple-cider-vinegar-netflix.html