The antic, hyped-up, Tom Haverford-ian personality we maybe most closely associate with the comic Aziz Ansari—a genial, good-times guy who mines millennial culture for its amiable silliness—perhaps belies a more thoughtful soul. It’s clear from Ansari’s stand-up that there’s a sense of decency and empathy underpinning his comedy, which is pointed but never mean, self-deprecating but not so much that it creeps back around to self-regard. It’s telling, maybe, that when given the opportunity to write a comedian cash-grab book, Ansari instead paired up with an N.Y.U. sociologist to do some light probing into humanity’s quest for companionship. Ansari likes to be a little bro-y, in a funniest-guy-in-the-nerdiest-frat kind of way, but he’s a softie, a real humanist, at heart.

Which is why it’s such a pleasure to watch his new Netflix series, Master of None, an endlessly likable comedy that bats about lightly, but smartly, with some deep topics: family, identity, love, commitment, race. Created by Ansari and Alan Yang, Master of None takes many cues from FX’s brilliant comedian-on-life series Louie, a bittersweet, and sometimes devastating, look at the beautiful, bleak tundra of middle age. There’s a similar offbeat-ness, the way Master of None prods at the edges of scripted television’s boundaries like Louie does, and a rueful, romantic vision of New York City as a magical place that enlivens and enriches, confuses and alienates. But because Ansari is a good 15 years younger than Louie creator Louis CK, Master of None has a livelier, far less mordant energy—Ansari’s comedy bounces with hopefulness. His show’s outlook isn’t naïve, but it has a warm, inviting cheer to it.

Ansari plays Dev, an actor who’s making a decent living doing commercials, but would of course like more: fame, money, artistic fulfillment. He and his main group of friends—played by Lena Waithe, Kelvin Yu, and Eric Wareheim—hang out at cool, but not trendy, bars and restaurants, and debate the particulars of sex, love, dating, etc. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but Ansari and Yang only focus on this basic stuff for so long. Each episode is given a title—”Indians on TV,” “Parents”—that provides a framework, and then Ansari bangs around within those vague confines with creative glee, confines be damned. In “Parents,” the show zooms back in time to Dev’s father’s life as a little boy in India, and then to Yu’s character’s father in Taiwan. In the beautiful episode “Mornings,” we follow quotidian, but meaningful, moments in a relationship over the course of a whole year. In one episode! Of half-hour comedy! That Master of None feels confident bending the conventions of its genre is a direct testament to the Louie effect, yes, but also to the confident, assured artistry of its creators.

This is, in some hackneyed sense, a big breakthrough for Ansari, who delighted audiences for years on Parks and Recreation and in his high-energy stand-up, but here offers us a glimpse of a more thorough worldview. There’s a strain of old, good Woody Allen in Master of None, a flicker of the Brookses James L. and Albert, all that neurotic romantic-comedy stuff. But the show is told in an entirely modern vernacular, loose and improvisatory and unburdened by self-conscious cynicism. The episodes, most of which are directed by Ansari or Wareheim, all have a graceful spark to them, glowing with originality and, sometimes, anyway, insight. The Louie comparisons are easy to make, but pretty early on in the season,Master of None begins to differentiate, to spin off in directions that Louie can’t or won’t.