Lessons in Chemistry: Book vs. Series
Lee Eisenberg’s 2023 series Lessons in Chemistry adapts Bonnie Garmus’s 2022 novel. Chemist Elizabeth Zott becomes a television cooking host, bringing a scientist’s approach to an audience whose ambitions are often dismissed.
From Books Adapted
Which books each season covers
Eight episodes take the book through a changed ending
| Season | Book adapted |
|---|---|
| 1 | Lessons in Chemistry, covering the novel's main story through its conclusion, with new stories and a different destination for Elizabeth. |
| A guide, not an exact match: shows move scenes and storylines between books and seasons. | |
Apple released it as a limited series, no second season has been announced.
What changed from the book
Harriet gets a new life and a fight of her own
The book's Harriet Sloane is an older neighbor who helps care for Elizabeth's daughter. The series reimagines her as a younger Black woman training to become a lawyer, with a community campaign of her own.
Her fight against a freeway through her neighborhood comes from Los Angeles history. Showrunner Lee Eisenberg said the change let the series consider a woman facing racism as well as the restrictions Elizabeth encounters as a woman. Director and executive producer Sarah Adina Smith said the writers wanted to bring the history of Sugar Hill's destruction into the story.
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Elizabeth returns to science by teaching
The novel sends Elizabeth back to Hastings as a chemist. The series instead ends with her teaching chemistry while pursuing her doctorate.
Eisenberg said the writers came to see teaching as the connection between her scientific work and her cooking show. They wanted her next step to keep that contact with an audience, rather than return her to working alone in a lab. Director Tara Miele described the ending as an opening into work that lets Elizabeth connect with other people.
About the book and the series
- Author
- Bonnie Garmus
- Year
- 2022
- Pages
- 400Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 11 hr 55 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Miranda Raison, see all
Elizabeth Zott insists on being taken seriously as a chemist in a research institute that considers her sex an obstacle to her work. When her circumstances leave her raising a daughter and presenting a television cooking program, she brings scientific rigor to the kitchen and begins challenging the assumptions governing the lives of her audience.
- Creator
- Lee Eisenberg
- Year
- 2023
- Episode
- 45 minWatch on Amazon
- Seasons
- 1
- Episodes
- 8
- Network
- Apple TV
- Cast
- Brie Larson, Aja Naomi King, Stephanie Koenig, Lewis Pullman
- Genre
- Drama, historical drama
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
On the set of Supper at Six, Elizabeth Zott treats cooking as chemistry and expects her viewers to understand both. Her refusal to play the reassuring housewife makes her an unusual television host, while the life behind the broadcast involves thwarted laboratory work, grief, and raising a daughter whose questions reach into her mother’s past.
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