Arnold

However Schwarzenegger got there, “Arnold” reminds us of his often-surprising and mostly charmed life, failures and all. And while one is tempted to say, “He’ll be back,” the truth is that when it comes to fame, Schwarzenegger hasn’t left the stage, in one field or another, since he first muscled onto it.

“Arnold” is a welcome opportunity to spend time with one of the most amazing success stories in Hollywood — and political — history.

His brand is at no point challenged. Schwarzenegger has an action comedy series on Netflix, Fubar, and it was never going to put that in jeopardy. So the effect is cosy, but in fairness to the director Lesley Chilcott, it is never boring.

Arnold might be an airbrushed profile but it’s also a breezy watch that the actor’s loyal fan base will lap up.

Though Chilcott is credited as director, the one really dictating where it all goes and what it discusses remains Schwarzenegger himself. He is almost always the one with his hands firmly on the wheel of Arnold, steering it into a work that is occasionally revealing yet too carefully sculpted to be fully transcendent.

Arnold’s candidness thus feels manicured, and hardly designed to plumb Schwarzenegger’s legacy in anything other than rosy terms. Fortunately, for most of its three-hour runtime, it doesn’t have to strain too hard to craft an uplifting and charismatic portrait of dedication and determination.

Your tolerance for this much smäh will depend on how much you like Schwarzenegger’s shimmering present-tense narrative. (About working on “End of Days” after undergoing heart surgery: “This is a new day. Let’s just move forward.”) Some will find the sheer length of “Arnold” to be punishing enough, while others will puzzle over a clueless narrative full of ersatz values.

As a fan, it was fun to revisit old stories, even if we know them very well. The show knows when to tell us the gist of some events, but it also knows when to dive deep in detail over some other stories.