‘Lessons in Chemistry’ lets Brie Larson shine

For fans of peak TV, the debut of “Lessons in Chemistry” is a sublime confection that sets a new table for period drama enthusiasts looking for a show with bite. For fans of the bestselling 2022 novel written by Bonnie Garmus, the miniseries is a highly anticipated adaptation.

An ensemble cast, led by showrunner Lee Eisenberg (“The Office”), stars Academy Award-winner Brie Larson (“Room,” “Captain Marvel”) slaying her role as a thwarted 1950s scientist named Elizabeth Zott who finds revenge — and redemption — as the host of a protofeminist cooking show.

Our heroine is a stoic 30something chemist, employed as little more than a coffee maker at a venerated science lab. She is at the center of this classic woman-against-the-world melodrama, with spicy wit. When Elizabeth is finally thrown out of the lab for being an unwed mother, she stumbles into hosting a local TV cooking show, where her nonconformist expertise in the kitchen makes her a star.

Elizabeth is an odd bodkin who happens to look like Grace Kelly. When she falls in love with another eccentric scientist, Calvin, played by Lewis Pullman (“Top Gun: Maverick”), the two are irresistible.

Readers have debated whether Elizabeth and her paramour are on the autism spectrum. They are STEM smarties, sure, but they are also “social flops” who often misread the room, are picky in their habits and have difficulty managing their emotions that others read as insensitivity.

“Neurotribes” author Steve Silberman, whose work is legend in autism civil rights, said we are witnessing a “golden era” in pop culture that celebrates the humanity of neurodiversity, rather than the 20th-century clichés that showed those with autism as one-dimensional shutins.

Silberman, showrunner Eisenberg and show supervisor Shamell Bell (“The Hate U Give”) spoke to the Chronicle about the most powerful subplot: the razing of Los Angeles’ Sugar Hill, where Calvin and Elizabeth live and fall in love.

Sugar Hill, now known as the West Adams neighborhood, was an affluent Black neighborhood, and our two chemists are portrayed as its only white residents. In the 1950s, Los Angeles decided to build Interstate 10 through the Sugar Hill community, destroying it forever. There were protests at the time, and in this TV story, one of the leaders is a brilliant attorney named Harriet, played by Aja Naomi King (“How to Get Away With

Murder”), who happens to be Calvin and Elizabeth’s next-door neighbor.

In the script, Calvin moves to Sugar Hill seemingly oblivious to the fact that he lives in a Black neighborhood, or the existential threats that face their community. He is “color-blind” and truly admires Harriet and her children. When Elizabeth joins him, it’s a regular “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Or is it?

If the white protagonists are on the spectrum, is it believable that they’d be so clueless to a cultural upheaval around them?

Silberman, who hadn’t seen the show at the time of this interview, thinks it’s plausible.

“On the other hand, a passion for social justice is practically diagnostic — awareness of unfairness is a highlight among those on the spectrum,” he said. “These characters might be oblivious and naive. But once

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