That’s thanks to a particularly sensitive approach from creator Samantha Strauss, who got her start co-creating the Australian teen drama “Dance Academy” before joining the writing team for Hulu’s own wellness drama, “ Nine Perfect Strangers .” Strauss combines those two experiences into a show that’s as interested in capturing a snapshot of early 2010s girl culture (think blogs, Instagram, burgeoning fourth wave feminism, and flower crowns) as it is in delving into the particulars of one specific scam.
The latest to join their ranks is Netflix’s “Apple Cider Vinegar,” a six-part miniseries inspired by an Australian wellness influencer who claimed she beat brain cancer through healthy eating, out Thursday. And while the series starts and ends with a bit of a style-over-substance approach, the middle chunk of episodes are among the best the scammer drama genre has produced so far.
One of the biggest TV trends of the 2020s has been the rise of scammer dramas. From Netflix’s “ Inventing Anna ” to Hulu’s “The Dropout” to AppleTV+’s “ WeCrashed , ” these stylized, slightly fictionalized retellings of ripped-from-the-headlines stories chart the rise and fall of glamorous, media-savvy entrepreneurs (many of them young women) who promise the moon only to deliver hot air.
Strauss structures her story like an onion, with layers of overlapping timelines that only slowly peel back to reveal the full truth. The series starts in 2015, when narcissistic wellness celebrity Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever) enlists a crisis manager to help her smooth over a public scandal that she faked her cancer diagnosis.
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From left: Alycia Debnam-Carey as Milla and Aisha Dee as Chanelle in
Netflix’s Kaitlyn Dever-starring “Apple Cider Vinegar”
