If Netflix had adapted Dr Seuss’s most famous book, The Cat in the Hat, I would have had to recuse myself. I was a child who thought the idea of a tiger coming to tea was frighteningly anarchic enough. The rebellious feline in the stripy chapeau, and the bedlam brought about by him and his vile henchmen Thing One and Thing Two, bordered on the malevolent. My soul hasn’t truly settled since. I was, and ever more shall be, firmly on the side of the fish.

Fortunately, the streaming service has chosen to drink from a more unexpected Seussian source: Green Eggs and Ham. The Cat in the Hat was written to offer something more interesting than the deathly dull Janet and John primer series available in the US at the time, still using only the prescribed vocabulary that children six and up were expected to know. After its runaway success, the publisher bet Dr Seuss (real name Theodor Geisel) that he could not write another for even younger readers using just 50 – The Cat had 236 – of the most basic words.

Geisel could and did, to tell the story of Sam-I-Am, who loves green eggs and ham, and an unnamed protagonist who most assuredly does not. He does not like them in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, on a train in the rain or anywhere else. There does not seem to be a location or dining companion that will make the proposed repast acceptable to him, and one cannot be unsympathetic to his resistance to such an unappealing and surely medically unsanctioned diet. But Sam’s persistence eventually erodes his will. He is astonished to find that they are actually delicious. The heavily illustrated 64-page story ends on a note of apologia infused with celebration. We live, we ingest meat and dairy of uncertain age and provenance, we learn.

Now this tale has been seized, and the Seussian world expanded upon, to make an entire animated series, executive produced by Ellen DeGeneres, about Sam I Am (Adam DeVine), his gastro-passion and his irascible respondent – here given the name Guy Am I, voiced by Michael Douglas, yes, that Michael Douglas – and their growing friendship as they embark on a journey to Meepville together. Wildlife Protector Sam is going to return a chickaraffe he has apparently rescued from a zoo to his rightful home, and Guy is to take up a job as a paint watcher after giving up on being an inventor because all his creations keep exploding.

Funny and charming … Green Eggs and Ham, featuring Ilana Glazer and Diane Keaton. Photograph: Netflix

On the way, they are pursued by Bad Guys, befriend a neurotic widow (Michellee, played by Diane Keaton, who is a Cautious Bean Counter) and her feisty daughter (EB, voiced by Ilana Glazer) and the Goat (John Turturro) sent by Snerz, a megalomanic CEO with a decidedly Trumpian attitude and silhouette, voiced with relish by Eddie Izzard. It has all the fun, charm, inventiveness, slapstick, Heath Robinsonesque inventions, crazy carnival rides, derring-do and slides down tunnels of goo that a child – or childlike person of any age – could desire. The Seussian spirit of generosity and curiosity abound, and the show – with its intricate metropolises, bonkers flora and fauna, and a rollercoaster round every corner – looks and sounds as if it could have sprung from the great doctor himself.

Grownups who find nothing to enjoy here are surely desperate creatures, but perhaps even they will find solace in jokes like the sign above Meepville’s star attraction – “Dopamino’s Toy Emporium” – and the show’s various film parodies. The whole of Les Misérables amalgamated into one imprisoned mouse was a particular favourite, but The Usual Suspects, The Shawshank Redemption and Cool Hand Luke are all here, too.

To that, especially as we head through the second half of the series, the team behind it has added depth of character and backstory – and with those things come heart and frankly ridiculous emotional impact. Two twists and turns towards the end made me emit tiny gasps of pain, so invested was I in the story of Sam, Guy and just why you might cleave so tightly to one unappetising dish all your life. I did like it, Sam-I-Am.