Plum thinks that her life will start as soon as she loses weight. When she’s enmeshed in a shadowy feminist conspiracy (likely involving a terrorist cell that goes by the name of Jennifer), it starts anyway. Turns out it’s the patriarchy Plum has to lose, not the pounds.

Television has become increasingly receptive to loop-de-loop tonal shifts — from “Better Call Saul” to “Fargo” to “Good Girls” to “Barry.” But few shows demonstrate a range as extreme as “Dietland,” which wears like a lipstick laced with anthrax, ricocheting from drama to horror to satire to rom-com to revenge fantasy. It’s a sincere attempt at feminist consciousness-raising, smuggled inside a murder mystery. The sequences of Dali-esque surrealism are the cherries on top.

“The show just feels like it visits a lot of different territories,” Ms. Noxon said during an on-set dinner she didn’t have time to finish. “And now I’m going to eat some food.” (She was pulled away a few minutes later. She wrapped the plate to go.)

Ms. Noxon, 53, who radiates the focused cheer of a pep squad captain, has rarely met a genre she couldn’t handle. In her decades in television, she has worked in most of them, with a particular interest in the roles women choose and the ones chosen for them.