'Apple Cider Vinegar' review: Smart, compelling with great performances

WHAT IT'S ABOUT "Apple Cider Vinegar" tells the story of the Australian health and wellness influencer Belle Gibson, who built up a social media following and business structured around the fraudulent claim that she beat her terminal brain cancer through a natural regimen.

The six-episode limited series stars Kaitlyn Dever ("Dopesick") as Belle, and parallels her storyline with two other characters. There's Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a rival who constructs her own wellness line based around the fiction that diet changes and coffee enemas can cure cancer, including her own. Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) struggles to cope with her own cancer diagnosis and looks to Belle for the promise of a better future.

The series from creator Samantha Strauss is based on the 2017 book "The Woman Who Fooled the World."

MY SAY This is a perceptive work with a lot to say not only about how social media has transformed this industry, but also the ways in which the mini-dopamine hits of likes and comments have fundamentally changed our psychology.

It's strikingly authentic and captured with a visual eye for representing these ideas. When a Belle post seems to have been particularly well received, or inspiration for something strikes, a flood of reaction emoji stream off the device in question and into the sky, as the character looks on in pure bliss.

But a viewing of the first four episodes makes something clear: What sets "Apple Cider Vinegar" apart is the compassion with which it depicts these characters, and its steadfast refusal to judge them.

As she's presented in "Apple Cider Vinegar," Belle is a scammer and a fraud, always looking for the next person to manipulate. But Dever recognizes and draws out the humanity underpinning it, which has a lot to do with our essential need to be loved and adored and celebrated, to make the sort of impact that makes people take notice. In another series, this character might have leaned more toward sociopathy. Here, we understand why she does what she does.

The series offers the same level of care and attention in its depiction of Milla and Lucy. They're actual cancer patients who solicit and, in Milla's case, promote ridiculous alternative medicinal solutions not because they're gullible or easily manipulated, but because they want to live.

There's no better illustration of this than an early scene in which Milla and her parents sit around a cold, corporate table, surrounded by doctors, who tell her that the only solution to the cancer in her arm is to amputate.

The moment is captured without embellishment. The experts are matter-of-fact and focused and straightforward. What they say makes sense.

But it still feels like it's been lifted straight out of a horror movie. It's a gut-wrenching thing to hear. And it might very well drive even the smartest and most scientifically inclined person to seek out some other option, no matter how outlandish or crazy.

BOTTOM LINE: Smart and compelling, with great performances, "Apple Cider Vinegar" also has a lot to say about human nature.