It has become an increasingly common caveat to even the most enthusiastic of TV recommendations. “You must watch X!” a friend, who wishes you only happiness, says. “It doesn’t get going until episode two or three – but after that it’s great!” With an eight-episode series, this is the equivalent of being told you must plough through the first 80-130 pages of the new bestseller before your investment begins to be rewarded. This would be a cheeky stunt for an author to pull, but television gets away with it quite often – perhaps because the effort it takes to watch is so much less than reading.
So, let’s deal with the maths for Fleishman Is in Trouble, adapted for the small screen by Taffy Brodesser-Akner from her 2019 novel of the same name. This one only really gets going in its seventh episode (a rough correspondence with the book), when it performs the original’s outstanding pivot, which could be seen as testing an audience’s patience to the limit.
