10 Best TV Shows Like Disclaimer

Turn a true auteur like Alfonso Cuarón loose on his first major TV project, and it’s no surprise audiences are eating up his Apple TV+ series Disclaimer. A slow burn of a show combining mystery, psychological thrills, and a complicated narrative, the five-time Oscar-winning director keeps ratcheting up the secrets and lies throughout. Disclaimer‘s all-star cast includes Cate Blanchett as journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, who learns she’s the lead character in a new book that somehow exposes the darkest deed of her past.

As highlighted in the reviews for Disclaimer, the show plays with viewer expectations throughout, mixing truth and perception into a time-hopping story that doesn’t reveal all of its cards until its final episode. Disclaimer cleverly dices up how personal biases, murky pasts, and even the modern media landscape shape how people view their own reality. Once audiences have digested all of Disclaimer‘s seven episodes and its shocking end, they’ll be ready to dive into 10 other series that also travel the rocky terrain of true crime, trauma, fractured timelines, and good old-fashioned TV drama.

10 Mrs. America (2020)

Cate Blanchett As Phyllis Schlafly Is More Acting Gold From One Of The World’s Finest

Similar to Disclaimer, Blanchett’s incredible talent was the centerpiece of FX’s Mrs. America, a 2020 limited series showcasing how political conservatives went to war against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. However, while Disclaimer uses narrative fireworks and structural trickery, Mrs. America takes a more subdued approach. It offers another look at what Blanchett is capable of as a performer in an incredibly difficult role.

As the activist, author, and staunch anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, Blanchett goes well beyond mimicry or caricature, imbuing Schlafly with enough humanity and conviction in her cause that you can occasionally forget what a political monster she becomes. If your only exposure to Blanchett is through titanic film performances like Tár and Blue Jasmine, then Mrs. America should shine as another unquestionable measure of her remarkable abilities as an actor.

9 Dark Matter (2024-Present)

Time Travel And Happy Home Lives Don’t Mix

As evidenced by Disclaimer, complicated thrillers are right in Apple TV+’s wheelhouse these days – but when they come as convoluted and delicious as Dark Matter, the average viewer may not always be able to keep up. As some might have missed it last May, Dark Matter follows Professor Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), who learns his work has unlocked the door to multidimensional travel. However, it isn’t really his work. It was actually a Dessen from another timeline – and now, versions of Dessen from a host of different dimensions are all hopping throughout the multiverse, each with their own agenda.

While “our” Dessen is only trying to get back to “his” universe to save his wife and son, he crosses paths with Dessens from both thriving and devastated Earths, each shaped by their own multiversal experience and spurred to take action across time and space, even when it brings them into conflict with each other. For viewers ok with scribbling notes and even building flowcharts to keep all of the story’s timelines straight, Dark Matter could be the perfect series.

8 Collateral (2018)

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Collateral (2018)

Written by David Hare and directed by S. J. Clarkson, Collateral is a challenging four-part series offering a nuanced exploration of inner-city London. Carey Mulligan stars as DI Kip Glaspie, investigating the shooting of a pizza delivery driver. Alongside Nathaniel Martello-White as DS Nathan Bilk, they uncover a web of interconnected characters.

Cast
Carey Mulligan , Nathaniel Martello-White , Hayley Squires , Vineeta Rishi , Jeany Spark , nicola walker , John Simm , Kae Alexander

Release Date
March 9, 2018
Seasons
1
Network
BBC Two

While easy to confuse with the Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx movie of the same name, this Collateral is a 2018 BBC miniseries written by David Hare that doesn’t just deliver a gripping detective story. It also dives deep into complex social issues like immigration, political corruption, and how “the system” rarely runs as efficiently as it needs to.

Investigating the murder of a pizza delivery driver, Detective Inspector Kip Glaspie (Carey Mulligan) chases that juicy mystery through a complicated web of interconnected characters that spotlight how people plucked from various backgrounds and walks of life create diverse perspectives – but don’t always add up to justice. Combining a thought-provoking story about multiculturalism with edge-of-your-seat crime thriller excitement fronted by another Oscar-nominated powerhouse in Mulligan, Collateral is likely to provoke questions you’ll have a tough time answering even after the series is complete, not unlike Disclaimer.

7 Big Little Lies (2017-Present)

Murder And Ennui Never Looked This Beautiful

For viewers who love mysteries and personal traumas headlined by A-list acting talent, it doesn’t get much better than the prestigious HBO series Big Little Lies. Boasting star-worthy performances from Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, and Laura Dern, this 2017 series focuses on a cluster of housewives at the center of a mysterious murder investigation in the sleepy coastal town of Monterey, California.

While the star wattage and slow reveals of the investigation create a steamy pot-boiler of a story (viewers don’t even know who’s been murdered until the season 1’s final episode), the true star of Big Little Lies is the gorgeous cinematography by director and series executive producer Jean-Marc Vallée. While themes of domestic abuse, motherhood, and bullying abound, it’s the creeping, almost voyeuristic slow sweep of Vallée’s camera in season 1 that sharpens each character’s feelings of isolation and loneliness. Audiences will never see gorgeous coastal homes and crashing Pacific Ocean waves the same way again.

6 The Undoing (2020)

Come For Nicole Kidman…Stay For Hugh Grant

It could be argued that the 2020 HBO miniseries The Undoing is even more compelling than Big Little Lies, at least as far Nicole Kidman projects go. This time around, Kidman is bouncing off the charm, smarm, and underlying darkness of her on-screen husband Hugh Grant. Created by David E. Kelley and based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, this tightly wound thriller crackles thanks to Grant, who shifts effortlessly between his natural air of charisma and malevolence as pediatric oncologist Jonathan Fraser, who’s charged with murdering his lover.

As Jonathan’s wife Grace struggles with the question of her husband’s innocence or guilt, it’s Grant’s inscrutability that brings this story of opulent New York City elitists to a true head. The Undoing is fairly straight-forward whodunnit in comparison to Disclaimer, but with Grant and Kidman delivering at the heights of their acting powers, everyone’s game is raised.

5 Sharp Objects (2018)

Sometimes, Work Can Hit Too Close To Home

Sharp Objects (2018) z

Sharp Objects is an HBO thriller mini-series that centers on reporter Camille Preaker, a woman with a dark past returning to her hometown. Returning to Wind Gap, Missouri, to investigate two murders, she takes up at her childhood home, where she must now contend with her mother, who will force her to reckon with her past.

Cast
Amy Adams , Patricia Clarkson , Chris Messina , Eliza Scanlen , Matt Craven , Henry Czerny , Taylor John Smith , Madison Davenport , Miguel Sandoval , Will Chase

Release Date
July 8, 2018
Seasons
1
Creator(s)
Marti Noxon

Those whose taste in mystery and deep-rooted familial pain sway toward nihilism and a real sense that the dark evil world will never, ever change may be the perfect audience for Sharp Objects. This adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel follows journalist Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) as she returns to her small Missouri hometown to cover the murders of two young girls.

The case unwittingly digs up years of suppressed wounds for Preaker, who begins to reexamine her own history of family secrets and mental illness in the process. While the murders themselves dredge up long-sealed trauma and painful memories, it’s all accentuated by the double-barreled combination of eerie Southern-based visuals and a mournful, disconcerting soundtrack by composer Alexandra Stréliski. These two elements ramp up the unease and otherworldly isolation that envelope Preaker as her mental state crashes, with Adams giving an impressive performance akin to Blanchett’s in Disclaimer.

4 Shining Girls (2022)

A Murder Investigation With A Very Unreliable Narrator

Based on Lauren Beukes’ novel, Apple TV+’s 2022 series Shining Girls centers around a serial killer traveling through time and the tough-nosed journalist intent on ending his murder spree. That in itself isn’t a game-changingly original idea. However, it all changes when journalist Kirby Mazrachi, played by the always magnetic Elisabeth Moss, can’t even trust her own version of reality as true.

This unique series mixes sci-fi and crime tropes into a messy narrative stew, as Kirby attempts to solve her own attempted murder four years earlier even while everything around her, including her home, her job, and even her friends and closest relationships all start changing under her feet. While time travel is real in Shining Girls, it really serves more as a metaphor for Kirby’s inability to put her life back together and process what’s happening in her world. For murder mystery fans, it’s a gripping watch. However, for those willing to go along with the time travel conceits, the story vaults into a higher, even more satisfying gear.

3 Dark (2017-2020)

Time Travel, Doppelgangers, Generational Angst – All In A German Forest

Alternate timelines and excruciating personal traumas intersect in Netflix’s brain-busting sci-fi German import Dark. Debuting in 2017, Dark dared audiences to keep up with the breakneck mystery and secrets found in the small forest community of Winden, taking a similar level of narrative leaps as Disclaimer in the process.

Time travel eventually sends many of Dark’s characters careening into their own pasts and futures, creating enough paradoxes and multiversal doppelgangers that even Dr. Strange would tap out from sheer exasperation. But it’s the intricate storytelling and heart-tugging family dynamics that fuel all those time shenanigans that make Dark an absolute must-see, whether viewers are able to figure out what’s actually going on or not. Dark Matter may have done fractured narrative weirdness more recently, but Dark did it first – and arguably even better.

2 I May Destroy You (2020)

Michaela Coel’s Triumphant Series Tackles Sexual Assault Like Never Before

TV hasn’t produced a more gripping, more disconcerting, less comforting depiction of the aftereffects of trauma than this landmark 2020 HBO miniseries anchored by star, writer, director, executive producer, and series creator Michaela Coel. As young writer Arabella Essiedu struggling to overcome a sexual assault, Coel diffuses the horrors of that recovery with a sardonic dark humor that’s deeply personal, messily human, and all together relatable for anyone who’s worked to regain their bearing after a life-changing trauma.

Arabella doesn’t remember her attack, so flashbacks and non-linear storytelling help viewers fill in the pieces across the 12-episode series, an approach reminiscent of how Disclaimer handles the passage of time. Arabella’s recovery doesn’t come without repeated setbacks and mistakes, and the show is more realistic for it. However, it’s the honesty of her story that is both engrossing and unflinchingly thought-provoking.

1 Mare of Easttown (2021)

Kate Winslet Is Convincing In This Gritty Part

For those hunting for a pinnacle work in the rapidly growing sub-genre of Oscar-nominated actresses glamming down to play a no-frills detective, Kate Winslet is the current belt holder. As the titular Mare of Easttown, Winslet owns every inch of this stellar 2021 HBO series.

As small-town detective Mare Sheehan, Winslet leads the investigation into the murder of a local girl, a death that unsettlingly calls back one of Mare’s unsolved cases. Meanwhile, she’s still struggling with her son’s recent suicide, unearthing miles of unresolved grief. The British-born Winslet slips on the suburban Philadelphia Delco accent like a well-worn glove in one of her finest performances, backed by a murderer’s row supporting cast, including Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Evan Peters, Guy Pearce, and Cailee Spaeny. It’s engrossing storytelling that will resonate with those who appreciate Disclaimer‘s murky narrative depth.

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