I binged Netflix’s new #1 series, the six-episode Apple Cider Vinegar, this weekend, and today, it’s all my friends and I can talk about. Here’s my review of why you should watch it immediately, with some special insight due to my status as a wellness reporter and a woman who has a personal special connection to the “healing journeys” referenced in the series.
I Binged Netflix’s New #1 True Crime Series and, as a Wellness Reporter, I Have Thoughts
Wellness culture, meet scammer style
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Published Feb 10, 2025
Courtesy of Netflix
In a nutshell, ACV tells the story of an Australian wellness writer and influencer who built a thriving business called The Whole Pantry (her app was on the Apple Watch!) in the 2010s. Her strong connection to her audience came via a blog in which she told her followers about how, through clean eating, she had recovered from a cancer diagnosis that had given her “six weeks to live, four months tops.” Except, it was all a lie that Belle Gibson (a real person, btw) resolutely defended even after her beloved online community, investigative media and the courts turned against her.
Same old, same old, right? It’s fake heiress Anna Sorokin crossed with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy victim Gypsy Rose Blanchard, sprinkled with a little Instagram writer Caroline Calloway pixie dust, due to lead actor Dever’s tiny blond prettiness and the online startup culture backdrop. So why watch? Because the show’s compelling mix of poppy style, powerful acting and underlying social commentary combine to make this show a slow-moving car crash of mentally and physically ill people trying to get better through desperate means. You can’t stop cringing, but you can’t look away.
Each episode starts with a principal actor breaking the fourth wall and announcing that this story plays fast and loose with Belle Gibson’s real story—and that Gibson received no proceeds from the filmed drama. A jumbled timeline, bright online graphics and the sunny Australian setting, as well as an attractive cast, make this a fitting cancer drama for the Pinterest age. Belle’s story is contrasted with two real cancer sufferers, a fan and another wellness blogger with arm lesions, both of whom adhere to the “Western medicine is run by pharma giants and male doctors who are immune to our concerns and only want to make money and boss us around” online wellness chatter that’s become increasingly popular and legitimized by powerful vaccine skeptics.
Courtesy of Netflix 2024
Now my personal connection: Episode to episode, I was reminded of the many pitches I get for wacky alternative therapies for all kinds of wellness procedures, from plant-based wellness tinctures to vitamin supplement protocols to colored-light therapies and body adjustments. Do I believe most of the claims? No. Would I like for them to be cure-alls? Sure. Also, I thought back to my late husband’s anguished six-year cancer battle, including the year of Reishi mushroom smoothies that coincided with no new sarcoma. Did the mushrooms save him that year? Or was it a chemo effect? How can I ever know? It’s that sort of hope-against-hope, throw all the strong will you can at the problem, life-and-death desperation that I felt underlie everyone’s motivations in the show, in a completely convincing manner. Just like with the cancer I had in my home, I kept tuning back in to this show, thinking please let there be a happy ending.
Kaitlyn Dever is ideally cast as a pathological liar who can’t seem to help herself. (We’ve all met the type, a person who will just as soon tell you the sky is pink on a sunny day as blue, and really believe it.) Dever nails the wide-eyed nervousness of the actual Gibson, whose gotcha interview on Australia’s 60 Minutes you can watch online. But there’s no need. After finishing ACV, I had a hot shower and a silent word of thanks to—and yep, this sounds a little like Belle—the universe for a healthy body and the ability to tell the truth. I think everyone should watch ACV to remember that scammers are out there, and to not throw the proverbial centuries of scientific learning out with the bathwater.
