Perrotta, who has seen all of his novels get at least optioned for adaptation, has been moving in this direction since “Election,” in which he introduced the now-archetypal striver Tracy Flick. The author barely weighed in on Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor’s screenplay for the 1999 film adaptation. (“I didn’t know anything about scripts at the time, but I could tell that one was great,” he said.) But a few years later he wrote the script for the 2006 adaptation of his suburban infidelity tale “Little Children” with the director Todd Field, and Perrotta followed that by creating HBO’s “The Leftovers,” based on his 2011 novel of the same name, with Damon Lindelof.

The author strongly disagrees with “the notion that you have to be a certain identity to write about a certain identity, because then all we’d have is autofiction.” But he and the producers knew a roomful of dudes wasn’t going to cut it for “Mrs. Fletcher.” The writers’ room had more women than men and all of the directors were women, including Nicole Holofcener , who shot the pilot, Carrie Brownstein and Gillian Robespierre.

“When you have such a strong actress as the lead of it, having a female voice as director is really important,” said Helen Estabrook, an executive producer.

With its screen-addled suburbanites negotiating sex, shifting mores, loneliness and identity, “Mrs. Fletcher” — both the book and series — is vintage Perrotta, the latest of his tales to mine au courant anxieties for drama and dark comedy. As Eve pursues ever bolder adventures alone and with others, secondary characters — an aimless, sexually fluid co-worker, a trans professor romancing one of her students — are given space to sort through their own issues.

“For so long trans people on television have been the butt of jokes or murder victims,” McLeland, who is transgender, said of Margo, the professor played by Jen Richards. “She’s treated like a human who gets to do human things — I hate that it’s such a novelty.”