Karl Puschmann: Marriage (and my kitchen) go up in smoke in intriguing dramedy Fleishman is in Trouble

Jesse Eisenberg in Fleishman Is In Trouble, streaming now on Star on Disney+.

Last Sunday I almost burnt down my house. It was drab and raining outside and I'd sat down to enjoy a nice cup of tea when I smelled something burning. That's when I remembered the pita bread grilling in the oven.

I ran into the kitchen, opened the oven door and almost burnt my face off when thick orange flames leapt out at me. Thinking quickly, I shut the oven door. This appeared to solve the problem.

As a former boy scout, I know all about fire safety. The closed oven door would deprive the fire of the oxygen it needed to survive and prosper. I counted to 10 and re-opened the oven door, this time keeping my face a safe distance away. Again, aggressive naked flames lunged straight for me through the gap of the opening door. So I closed it.

It was now clear that my strategy of opening and closing the oven door was not effective at putting out the fire. I needed a new plan. I was not panicked but my concern over the situation was growing. I pressed the oven's off button and when the fire inside kept dancing I turned the oven off at the wall. Incredibly, this had no effect.

That's when my phone beeped to announce I'd received a message. It read: "Are you burning the house down?"

I assessed my situation. I had a fire blazing uncontrollably inside the oven, a fiancee away on the fourth day of her hiking trip wondering what the heck was going on back at home and the realisation that our 7-year-old daughter was a nark. It's fair to say that Puschmann was in trouble.

"Maybe," I replied.

In the new Disney+ dramedy Fleishman Is in Trouble, the recently divorced Toby doesn't even get the courtesy of a message. True, he's not fighting fire but he is dealing with an emergency. The school holidays have started, he's rostered on at the hospital where he works and his ex-wife Rachel has unceremoniously dumped their two children at his apartment and vanished off the face of the Earth after saying she was going to a yoga retreat.

He's also attempting to keep up his vigorous and adventurous dating life. After 15 years of marriage, Toby is now revelling in his freedom and the sexual revolution of modern dating apps. To his delight, he's discovered that as a highly paid Manhattan surgeon he's in high demand in a way that he wasn't when he was a nerdish teen.

Problem is, the kids are cramping his style and Rachel won't answer her phone. He's inconvenienced. He's frustrated. He's angry. What he's not, even after four days of no contact, is concerned about her.

The first two episodes show why. Theirs was a long and loveless marriage. His resentment fuelled by her social climbing and materialistic desires, hers powered by his high and mighty morality and lack of financial drive.

They are incredibly well off, but money can't buy happiness. Between Toby's current work/life balancing act we see the couple's marriage dissolve in fraught, fight-filled flashbacks. The show's narrator, Toby's friend Libby, fills in the blanks while frequently referring to Rachel as, "a total b****".

But is she? It seems to be the case but what we're seeing is all one-sided. Is Toby really the nice guy that he thinks he is? How much stock can we put into the recollections of him and his bestie? Is Rachel's ambition solely to blame for their marriage ending?

Also, which Fleishman is in trouble? Is it him or her? It isn't yet clear.

There's a lot to mull over in the opening episodes and I'm expecting a mid-season perspective switch that blows up everything we believe. In the leads, Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg are as great as you'd expect. Danes bares raw anger and emotion and Eisenberg bares far more than you'd ever want to see.

While I haven't read the novel the series is based on the show will appeal to fans of classic-style New York dramedies where smart wealthy people live miserable lives while dropping cutting one-liners.

So far, love, marriage, divorce and hookup culture are the main targets. But the seeds are being planted for deeper musing on ageing and identity and how to reconcile one with the other.

But for now, Toby is on day four of his sudden solo parenting experience. His kids may have spent an afternoon watching porn behind the back of their babysitter, been stuck at the hospital for a long boring day, almost been arrested at their holiday house and been shipped off to summer camp against their will but I had to admit that he was still doing better than me.

His kitchen wasn't on fire.