Apple Cider Vinegar tells you in clever ways at the beginning of each episode that the series is a true story based on a lie, and that Belle Gibson wasn’t making any money from the series. Kaitlyn Dever stars as Belle Gibson, an Australian scammer who claimed to have cancer (and other illnesses) to garner sympathy. She turned that sympathy into a money making scheme involving healthy food as a cure for illness.

Apple Cider Vinegar is great television. A top notch cast, clever ways to let you in on the scam, modern and effective handling of social media and texting, and a dramatically told story make the series fascinating. It reminded me a lot of Inventing Anna because of the way it was turned into a drama instead of one of those talking head, monotonal true crime stories.

Belle Gibson came out of the womb lying. Kaitlyn Dever did an outstanding job making her into a manipulative, smarmy, cheat and liar who would never admit the truth about anything. She especially loved to lie about illnesses she claimed to have. Her mother (Essie Davis) claimed to have MS, but she looked perfectly healthy. She learned at her mother’s feet.

Belle learned about Instagram when it began. She followed Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and admired her large number of followers. Milla really did have cancer. The doctors wanted to amputate Milla’s arm to save her life. She couldn’t deal with that idea and put her faith in a quack doctor in Mexico who used juice and coffee enemas to “cure” cancer.

Milla also promoted this juice and coffee cure on her Instagram feed. She wrote a book and sold juice and was going strong as a wellness guru. When Milla’s mother got cancer, she convinced her to use juice as a cure, too.

Chanelle (Aisha Dee) played a key role in the story. A childhood friend of Milla’s, she took a job helping Belle as a double agent for Milla. She is the one who went to journalists trying to expose Belle as a fake. It was hard to prove because Belle was so evasive.

The journalist Chanelle went to see, Justin (Mark Coles Smith), just happened to be married to Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). Lucy really did have cancer. She gave up chemotherapy to go to Peru for treatments from a shaman.

Tying in so many characters helped amplify the message that quack cures and internet famous wellness influencers are bad for your health.

Justin and the other journalists he worked with hit the jackpot when they realized that Belle had been using her website to collect money for charity and for a young boy’s cancer surgery but none of the money had ever been given to the charities named. They published that story and Belle’s empire began to crumble.

There were many other characters in this six episode series. Parents and relationships. When Belle was in her teens she had a child and was raising him alone. She latched onto Clive (Ashley Zukerman), convinced him she loved him, and moved him into her life. He took care of the little boy and loved the boy enough to stay with Belle in spite of finally realizing she was a scam artist.

True crime is not always my favorite genre, but this series was so well written and acted that it compelled attention. At the end, it started displaying cards telling about what happened to everyone. That was interrupted by Kaitlyn Dever saying, “Just Google it.” So I did, and I found an article at Time Magazine that covers the basics of truth and fiction in the series. It’s full of spoilers, so you might want to wait until you’ve watched the series to read it.

Apple Cider Vinegar is a new series, just out on Netflix.