Anna Kendrick makes her impressive directorial debut with “Woman of the Hour,” a dark comedic drama, loosely based on a bizarre true-life pop culture incident that occurred on daytime television on September 13, 1978.

That’s when a serial killer named Rodney Alcala was not only one of the three competing bachelors on “The Dating Game,” he confidently ‘won’ a date with the featured bachelorette.

Working from a terse script by Ian MacAllister McDonald, Kendrick skillfully elevates this cautionary tale into a tense thriller by weaving non-chronological fragments from several of Alcala’s previous predatory homicidal encounters – from 1971 to 1979 – into a cohesive story.

Spunky Sheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick) is an ambitious young actress struggling to carve a career in Hollywood. Problem is: she won’t do nudity and she’s far too savvy for most of the low-budget auditions that her agent arranges. 

Then she’s cast as a bachelorette on TV’s “The Dating Game,” Of course, frustrated Sheryl realizes the misogynistic show is trashy and the host (Tony Hale) is smarmy, but, at least, it affords her the opportunity to be ‘seen.’ 

Compared with the other clueless bachelor contestants, slick Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), who presents himself as a photographer, knows how to twist a conversation to his favor as he answers Sheryl’s questions. 

There’s some behind-the-scenes insight when Sheryl’s makeup artist notes that her real query should be “Which one of you will hurt me?”

What turns out to be most terrifying is what comes later, particularly when Laura (Nicolette Robinson), an audience member, recognizes Alcala as the man who murdered her friend in Malibu and tries to report him to the police. It’s too bad that Kendrick never delved more into the obvious ineptitude of law enforcement.

In 1980, Alcala was finally convicted of seven grisly rapes/murders, although it’s believed that he may have committed as many as 130.  He died on death row in 2021.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Woman of the Hour” is a sleazy, sinister 7, streaming on Netflix.

What a colossal disappointment! The limited series “Disclaimer” begins with a provocative premise: a successful woman’s entire existence is threatened when she receives a self-published book that seems to disclose her innermost secrets.

Shortly after London-based documentary journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) is publicly acclaimed for cutting through “narratives and forms that distract us from hidden truths” and revealing “our own complicity in some of today’s more toxic social sins,” she’s entangled in her own web of deception.

Arriving home one evening, Catherine discovers a docu-novel titled “The Perfect Stranger” that begins with a curious disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”

The narrative reveals that – 20 years earlier, while on a beach vacation in Italy with her then-five year-old son, Nicholas – young Catherine (Leila George) allegedly had an affair with 19 year-old Jonathan Brigstocke (Louis Partridge) after which she was indirectly responsible for his subsequent death by drowning.

Jonathan’s devastated parents – Stephen (Kevin Kline) and Nancy (Leslie Manville) – never recovered from the loss of their only child. Before she died of cancer, Nancy wrote “The Perfect Stranger,” filled with tawdry accusations based on a packet of erotic, sexually explicit photographs that Jonathan took of Catherine.

Still grieving, vengeful Stephen delivers copies to Catherine’s dim-witted, judgmental husband Robert (Sasha Baron Cohen), now-25 year-old depressed, drug-addicted son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), along with Catherine’s stunned co-workers, causing her life to spin into turmoil.

Based on Renee Knight’s raunchy psychological thriller, it’s the work of Mexican writer/director Alfonso Cuaron (“Roma,” “Gravity”), who devotes the first six episodes to Nancy’s lurid interpretation of how Catherine seduced her son and caused his death at sea.

It isn’t until the seventh – concluding – episode that Catherine is able to confront crazed, elderly Stephen and relate her side of the story. Drenched with banal melodrama, designed to manipulate, Indira Verma’s voice-over narration at this point is overly expository and moralizing.

On the Granger Gauge, “Disclaimer” is a frustrating 5 – with all episodes now streaming on Apple TV+.