I like to cook and bake. Though I’m nowhere near the calibre of the talented amateur chefs and bakers who compete on TV, I can follow a recipe quite well and achieve tasty results. I like to tell people that, for me, cooking and baking are like being in a chemistry lab, which is something that I enjoyed in high school and university.

It would appear that I’m not the only one who has made the association between cooking and chemistry. Last year, Bonnie Garmus published her first novel about a female lab technician who ends up becoming a TV cooking show sensation. “Lessons in Chemistry” was an immediate hit with readers and it has now been turned into an eight-part series.

Set in the late 1950s, Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson, CAPTAIN MARVEL; ROOM) is a brilliant if complicated young lab technician at the Hastings Research Institute in southern California. Through various twists of fate (and I won’t get into them because they would be spoilers), she finds herself out of a job in a world where there are few options for smart women like her. An avid cook at home, one of her delicious and wholesome meals finds its way to Walter Pine (Kevin Sussman, TV’s UGLY BETTY), a producer at a local TV station, who asks Elizabeth to host a cooking show. Elizabeth eventually agrees but she butts heads with Phil Lebensmal (Rainn Wilson, TV’s THE OFFICE (US version); WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY), the station’s sexist owner, who has a very different vision for the show than Elizabeth does.

As I started watching the series (and there are still three more episodes to be aired at the time of writing), my first thought was that LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY is a cooking version of THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL. Certainly, there are some similarities between the two characters — fiercely independent career women in the 1950s who are determined to break through their respective glass ceilings for starters — but at the end of the second episode, the story takes a sharp turn towards drama and stays there. That’s a good thing. Unlike Madge Maisel, who is warm in her interactions with others, Elizabeth Zott has quite a different personality. In my non-professional medical opinion, I would venture to say that she has Asperger’s. Her brilliance, her laser focus and her deadpan logic all remind me of people I know who are on that end of the autism spectrum. Whether she does or doesn’t, Elizabeth is still an interesting character to watch and even cheer for as she navigates life’s ups and downs.

Larson does a wonderful job bringing Elizabeth to life. The actress, whose biggest hit since she won the Best Actress Oscar for ROOM back in 2005 has been CAPTAIN MARVEL, reminds audiences just how talented she can be even without all the CGI gimmickry around her. (Her latest film, THE MARVELS, is due out later this week.) Elizabeth is more a person to respect rather than like and Larson has found that line that separates the two. She makes us want Elizabeth to succeed because she (Elizabeth) has earned it.

With three episodes left, I’m curious to see where Elizabeth’s journey will go. We’re given a hint in the series’ opening scene but I’m sure getting to that point won’t be a straightforward as following a recipe.

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY is streaming now on Apple TV+.

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