The Mandalorian is the spaghetti western the Star Wars universe was begging for.

When Disney+, Disney's ambitious new streaming service was announced, fans the world over asked a single question: why?

Why should we sign up for yet another paid streaming service?

And the answer from Disney, issued in a clear, declarative voice, was The Mandalorian.

Australian viewers had an extra obstacle to deal with: a whole week without the service, while the US, Canada and the Netherlands got to bask in its splendour.

This turned the internet into a minefield, as fans and press from these countries doled out coverage (and spoilers) from The Mandalorian, with Aussies forced to jam our fingers in our ears and pretend we weren't living in some odd technological backwater, hiding from memes that give away key plot points.

It's an unsettling feeling when, in 2019, the internet makes the world a unified place with no need for borders, yet Disney felt the need to turn us into what is effectively Tatooine; if there's a civilised centre to the planet, we're the country that it's farthest from.

But The Mandalorian is finally here!

Not just one episode, either; the delay has meant a backlog, and we suddenly have two episodes waiting for us.

The series even looks like a Western, with brilliant vistas of cracked deserts, burnt mesas and desolate wastes bleeding atmosphere. ( Disney )

This is a return to the old school

John Favreau, the man behind 2008's Iron Man and The Jungle Book, is behind the wheel on this ambitious and surprisingly restrained foray into Star Wars as a TV show.

Sure, we've had the animated outings The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, but those were ... well, animated.

They brought depth and weight to the milieu of George Lucas' prequel universe, but they were as such tasked with trying to make a bad thing better. And to be fair, they accomplished that with gusto. Watching the showrunners of these shows weave their magic was a little like watching a genius chef enter an understocked kitchen and turn spam, mayonnaise and cloves into a Michelin-grade meal.

The Mandalorian, however, is fine dining from the get-go.

Immediately punting viewers into the filthy, lived-in Star Wars of old, it takes place after the events of Return of the Jedi.

The Emperor has been flung into a pit, the second Death Star vigorously exploded, and our heroes have (hopefully) finished participating in a jubilant Ewok bacchanal on Endor.

But off in some far flung corner of the galaxy, a bounty hunter sets about doing his job in a universe now reeling from the aftermath of decades of oppressive rule under the thumb of the Empire.

So, what does a warrior do now that peace has tentatively begun to emerge?

It muddies the waters

The most famous Mandalorian of all is, of course, Boba Fett.

This mysterious helmeted bounty hunter made his debut as one of a cadre of bounty hunters hired by Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.

Never mind the fact that he got unceremoniously punted into the holler of the Sarlacc Pit in Return of the Jedi, fans were instantly obsessed.

The armour, the helmet, the flame thrower, the zippy little grappling hook. It was all so unbearably cool.

From there, the Star Wars expanded universe turned him into a legend, and a member of a proud warrior race: Mandalorians.

Lucas revealed that all of the clones in the Clone Wars were, in fact, clones of a legendary Mandalorian, Jango Fett.

But The Mandalorian does for Star Wars what Sergio Leone did for heroes in Westerns: it muddies the waters.

The Mandalorian (played by Pedro Pascal, of Narcos and Game of Thrones fame) wanders into a bar to collect a bounty, and once the opening crawl of the episode rolls, we know precisely what kind of a man he is.

Ruthless, quick, stylish, with just a hint of compassion. In short, he's got the makings of a great hero.

He never takes his mask off, either.

Leone gave us the Man with No Name; the Mandalorian gives us the Man with No Face.

Before long, he's presented with a contract by a shady individual known only as The Client, and the routine of his bounty-hunting life takes a sudden pivot toward chaos.

We all know, of course, the most famous Mandalorian of all: Boba Fett. ( Disney )

There's promise of an adventure yet to come

The first episode is a very clean 38 minutes of television.

The Mandalorian has an economy of language that is, frankly, striking — far from the excesses of The Last Jedi or the bombast of the animated outings mentioned previously, it plays like a proper Western, right down to the brilliant score courtesy of Ludwig Göransson.

It even looks like a Western, with brilliant vistas of cracked deserts, burnt mesas and desolate wastes bleeding atmosphere.

But it has heart, too. Taika Waititi's turn as IG-11, an assassin droid, is touching and hilarious, and even The Mandalorian's interaction with his first quarry gives a hit of vintage Star Wars charm.

What's interesting, however, is Favreau's unwillingness to succumb to the tendency Star Wars has had since Lucas made the prequels and onwards: using relentless noise and fan service to baffle viewers into mistaking average content as something they love simply because its brimming with all the cues and trappings of the universe they care about.

The Mandalorian, to its credit, gives its hero and plot room to breathe.

Also, Nick Nolte's turn as a grumpy yet well-meaning Ugnaught moisture farmer who aids The Mandalorian on his quest is legitimately charming.

And that, in a word, is what The Mandalorian gave us in its debut episode. Charm. And the promise of a hell of an adventure yet to come.

Truer to the spirit of Star Wars

Episode two takes a surprisingly sentimental turn, following The Mandalorian as he experiences a major delay in getting back to his regularly scheduled job.

The core of it can't really be talked about in much detail without ruining a genuinely fantastic reveal at the tail end of episode one (and I'd advise avoiding social media or your more talkative friends if you can until you've finished it).

It does, however, feature a prolonged sequence which should get die-hard fans squealing with delight.

It also features the return of Nick Nolte's Ugnaught pal from episode one, hinting that our hero might be allying himself with some colourful characters as the season rolls on.

However, one of the problems with fans is that they often mistake what makes the thing they like demonstrably good.

The prequels were actually brimming with good ideas, but fell aggressively flat because the execution was terrible, but also because they capitulated to the trappings that people associated with what made Star Wars cool.

Fans like lightsabers, so let's have thousands of lightsabers.

Luke Skywalker fights Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. ( The Empire Strikes Back )

Fans like droids, so let's have armies of droids. Fans like Yoda… so let's have a CGI Yoda flipping off walls engaged in a furiously stupid lightsaber battle, even though his core ethos in The Empire Strikes Back is that using the force isn't something that needs to be showy or excessive.

The Mandalorian, however, takes the trappings of what made Boba Fett "cool", the things that made fans go all-in on this vague member of the Star Wars pantheon … and pares it right back.

He rarely talks. He doesn't fight Jedi. The score is restrained, eschewing the usual fanfare and bombast of Star Wars music.

The pacing forces you to lean forward, to pay attention, to read between the lines.

It is, in short, artful and intelligent in a way that may cause some Star Wars fans to tense up and freak out, wondering why this is so different.

But in some ways it's truer to the spirit of Star Wars than The Last Jedi is; rather than telling a muddled, contrarian story, The Mandalorian — especially in episode two — shows that what we have here is a hero in the making.

A man with the potential to do great good, of a sort.

What, after all, is more satisfying than witnessing the potential for kindness blossoming in a barren place?

Paul Verhoeven is a writer and comedian, and his book Loose Units is out through Penguin Publishing. The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney Plus.