Lessons in Chemistry (Season 1)

Lessons in Chemistry (2023) is an Apple TV+ drama series you can watch online on iFILM, starring Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott — a research chemist in the 1950s whose career keeps getting derailed by men with worse credentials and better job titles. The show is adapted from Bonnie Garmus's novel, which sold over four million copies worldwide.

Elizabeth is the most capable person in every room she enters. That does nothing for her employment prospects. When circumstance lands her in front of a television camera as a cooking show host, she does not soften her approach — she teaches chemistry. Real chemistry: reactions, measurements, the actual science behind what happens in a pot. The housewives watching start to figure out she is teaching them something else entirely. Lewis Pullman and Aja Naomi King round out the central cast.

What makes the series work is that it does not settle for being a feel-good period piece. The obstruction Elizabeth faces is shown as systemic and largely invisible to the people doing it — which lands harder than any single villain would. Stream Lessons in Chemistry (2023) online on iFILM.