Over recent years we have seen the radical transformation of the docu-drama, from the reconstruction of stories faithfully based on a real-life narrative to sensationalised versions of events in a misty on-screen netherworld between truth and fiction.
How important is it that the events portrayed in series like Inventing Anna and Baby Reindeer are merely grounded in reality? Is this reconfiguring of genuine events for entertainment’s sake a great way to bring important issues and cases of interest to a wider audience? Or is the diminishing importance of the facts a sad indictment of societal disregard for honesty in a world where your preferred world view is delivered to your personalised social media feeds, each different demographic existing in parallel universes on-line?
The new Netflix drama series Apple Cider Vinegar, directed by Jeffrey Walker, is a case in point. Billed as ‘a true-ish story based on a lie’, it tells the story of a predatory Australian influencer who, in the early-to-mid-2010s, used Instagram to fool a huge following into believing she’d cured her terminal brain cancer by embracing healthy eating and clean living. In truth, it was total quackery: she’d never had cancer. The six-hour series, based on the book The Woman Who Fooled the World by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, fictionalises the real-life story of Belle Gibson whom they outed in 2015.
It’s a fascinating story for the influencer era, on cancer, food and faith in magical thinking. In the grid squares of Instagram, this brave beguiling hustler (played by Kaitlyn Dever) glows with health as she pedals recipes and alternative medicine as a cure for the desperate.
Shot in the Australian sunshine with break-out action at a Mexican retreat, the overriding flavour of Apple Cider Vinegar is golden sunshine, blue skies and fruit-bowl freshness. There’s love, loyalty and hope in abundance, and yes, it’ll have you thinking about what you put into your body.
There are even occasional stylised social media moments where the action pauses [think season 1 of Emily in Paris]: we see Belle bask in the floating hearts and emojis that rise from her mobile, a glowing effervescence of positivity.
However, this isn’t wholesome viewing. By encouraging her ‘fellow cancer sufferers’ to eschew modern medicine, Belle’s toxic messaging is undercutting years of medical research and killing her followers with false love and ‘likes’.
And there’s a darkness at her core. She was an unhappy child desperate for attention from a narcissistic mother, and we see the same pattern repeating itself: she continues propagating her lies about her ill-health despite seeing the damage her single-minded pursuit of popularity is doing to her small son. Thank goodness for Ashley Zukerman as the child’s step-dad Clive, whose kindness, loyalty and uncertainty (along with his physicality) remind me of an other-worldly Hugh Grant in Notting Hill transplanted into a grittier narrative.
In the fictional world, Belle’s rise to fame was fuelled by the success of a rival wellness warrior, Milla, played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, who is loveable but misguided. This character is clearly inspired by Bell’s contemporaneous influencer, Jess Ainscough, although there are considerable deviations in their stories.
Milla’s blind faith in the power of a mystical solution to rid her of an aggressive sarcoma, squarely based on internet disinformation, leads her to follow a suspect natural healing path with devastating consequences for her and her family. Laying bare the incredible faculty we have to kid ourselves, this is uncomfortable and enraging viewing for medically-trained professionals and all those who believe in the power of evidence-based science.
This show is also a reminder of the dubious power of the internet. Mark Zuckerberg is shown saying, “The web isn’t going to solve disease or solve poverty. But what it does is make it so people can share information effectively and know what’s going on. When people are better informed, they can make better decisions.” It’s true that, in principle, we can. It’s also true that often we don’t.
With a natural instinct for the way technological advances will change the world and a single-minded determination, Belle’s business empire wins glittering global accolades (and the real Belle Gibson’s app The Whole Pantry was voted Apple’s Best Food and Drink App of 2013). How can her parasitical online malignancy be stemmed?
Over time Belle’s ‘apple a day that keeps the doctor away’ begins to ferment and sour: as her fake health claims unravel, it seems her much promoted charitable works are all talk too.
Seduced from working with her childhood friend Milla, Belle’s right hand woman Chanelle, played by Aisha Dee, is determined to do the right thing – once the wool has fallen from her eyes. It’s a relief to see some common sense woven into the on-screen blend of woes and blindingly-bright heart-warming over-optimism.
And yet, it’s sociopath Belle and her secrets that we’ve tuned in to watch, in horror. We’re disgusted with her compulsion to dramatise her falsehoods, yet we’re all tuning in avidly to the latest ‘quite true’ dramatisation. Of course we are. It’s brilliant TV.
Mark Twain is famously quoted as saying ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’ and it’s an adage that production companies and streaming platforms are embracing whole-heartedly. Sensationalised docuseries are clearly popular but is this kind of dramatisation just as fraudulent as the story Belle pedalled?
In watching these fake versions of the truth are we allowing ourselves to be influenced just as Belle’s followers were? Or are we discerning viewers easily able to dissociate the fiction of a story that we’re told from the skeleton of truth on which it was built. After all, we all now understand that Instagram is a whole lot prettier than BeReal because it’s a glossed-over curated truth, don’t we?
In which case, kick back and raise a glass to Netflix – this one’s a corker!
