When Alfonso Cuarón approached Apple with his idea to adapt Renée Knight’s 2015 novel “Disclaimer” into a five-and-a-half-hour psychological thriller, he was very clear about one thing. “I don’t know [how] to make television.”

“For me, it’s a little late in the game to start learning,” he says, recalling that initial pitch as he prepares to screen “Disclaimer” at the Toronto Film Festival following its acclaimed premiere in Venice. Instead, Cuarón says he and stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen opted to “approach it the way I approach a film.”

And there were precedents he points to in film history for these kinds of sprawling, narratively dense works; “Reds,” “1900,” “Fanny and Alexander,” “Once Upon a Time in America,” even “Twin Peaks” served as inspiration for what he hoped to achieve. Many of those films were set in the past, using historical settings rife with war and revolution to justify their epic length.

“Disclaimer” is a thoroughly modern work, tackling contemporary concerns with the story of Catherine Ravenscroft, a veteran documentary filmmaker and journalist (Blanchett) whose upscale life is turned upside down after she receives a book that threatens to expose parts of her life she desperately wants to keep hidden. Cuarón’s series moves back and forth across time, following Catherine as she grapples with a crisis that could destroy everything she’s built, as well as a past encounter with Kline’s character’s deceased son, Stephen Brigstocke, a gruff, scheming widower with a grudge. It’s a show that works as both a propulsive thriller and a tough examination of bias and public shaming.