Roush Review: ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ Cooks Up Some Delicious Period Drama

Lessons in Chemistry

Matt's Rating:

Part Julia Child, part Marie Curie, with the movie-star glow of a Kim Novak, brilliant chemist Elizabeth Zott (the luminous Brie Larson) is ahead of her 1950s times. In Lessons in Chemistry, adapted for Apple TV+ from Bonnie Garmus’ bestseller, she channels her analytic genius into the kitchen when toxic sexism within a California college’s lab subjects her to humiliation from her patronizing colleagues.

“You are just not smart enough,” says her smarmy boss (Derek Cecil). She’ll show him, and everyone else.

When circumstances thrust her before a TV camera, where she demonstrates her culinary prowess as host of the bare-bones Supper at Six, her clinical approach — “Cooking is not fun. It is vital work” — is an unexpected hit, with everyone except the boorish station manager (Rainn Wilson as one of several too-obvious villains). Housewives are immediately enthralled, taking notes, seriously and literally, whenever Zott speaks. Her producer (The Big Bang Theory’s endearing Kevin Sussman) explains her appeal: “You respect your audience. You don’t talk down to people. You meet them where they are and you somehow raise them up.”

Likewise, the wonderful Chemistry tells Elizabeth’s tragicomic tale with compassion, passion, humor, wisdom, and an undercurrent of social outrage. It’s no accident that Dickens’ Great Expectations becomes a touchstone for this fictional fable of damaged souls finding connection while fighting the system.

My expectations were high, having loved the novel. Thankfully, this terrifically entertaining eight-part series more than meets them — think The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as a Ph.D. candidate — as the emotionally repressed Elizabeth opens her life and her heart to memorable characters who challenge and appreciate her. Most notably, her fellow scientist Calvin Evans (Top Gun: Maverick’s Lewis Pullman), an aloof eccentric who sees and comes to love her as an equal, and vibrant Aja Naomi King as her activist neighbor Harriet Sloane, who deferred her own law degree to raise a family and now battles to save her “blighted” (read: Black) neighborhood from being torn down to make room for a freeway.

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Alice Halsey is perfection later in the series as Elizabeth’s precocious daughter, who’s determined to solve a family mystery. And there’s even a shaggy-dog story, with an adopted goldendoodle named Six Thirty (Gus) narrating the most heartbreaking episode, poignantly voiced by The Office’s B.J. Novak.

Whatever your taste, it’s hard to imagine not being charmed and moved by a story that states as its thesis: “Courage is the root of change, and change is what we are chemically designed for.” Not to mention, Elizabeth’s food looks as delicious as it is nutritious. You’ll eat up this well-balanced and filling drama.

Lessons in Chemistry, Series Premiere, Friday, October 13, Apple TV+