Lots of books are declared “unfilmable.” There are the big, tentacular genre epics, where the problem is scale and expense, like “Sandman” or “Dune.” There are your high-literary properties, whose tone feels too elusive (most of Don DeLillo, though people keep trying) or whose form is too baroque (“Infinite Jest”) to carry well into another medium. Then there’s the stuff that’s just too bleak to be commercially viable, at least in theory (“The Road”).
“Lessons in Chemistry” is none of those things. Well before Bonnie Garmus’s debut landed on shelves, Apple TV Plus gave the adaptation, starring Brie Larson, a straight-to-series order. The premise feels laser-targeted at the “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” fandom. It’s a pop-feminist period piece about a chemist, Elizabeth Zott, whose scientific career is tanked by 1960s sexism, leading her to become an unexpected celebrity by hosting a nerdy cooking show.
But the novel has a few defining quirks that, while charming millions of readers on the page, seem challenging to render on-screen. Here’s a rundown of how the show handles them: