Now the story of a classic sitcom that lost its mojo, and the audience that had no choice but to keep coming back to see if it had gotten its act together again.

It’s “Arrested Development,” and I can report that the fifth season — whose first eight episodes arrive on Netflix on Tuesday — eventually re-approaches the manic pleasures of the show’s heyday. Unfortunately, it takes its time getting to that point, and it doesn’t stay long.

The original series, which ran from 2003 to 2006 on Fox, was a comedy miracle, capturing the oblivious entitlement of the wealthy Bluth family with elaborate farce plots and enough inspired coinages to fill a vault.

Netflix resurrected it in 2013. But because the cast members could only commit to brief shooting schedules — and because no one was quite sure what this newfangled “streaming TV” stuff would look like — the creator, Mitchell Hurwitz, devised an origami-folded fourth season, with a hopscotching timeline and episodes built around individual characters.