I’ll be honest: I’m getting tired of shows like Maniac. There was a time when a prestige drama starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, which plays like a three-way crossover between. Inception, Brazil, and FX’s Legion, would have sounded unmissable. But as you’ve probably noticed, there’s a lot of prestige-y TV out there these days. Much of it is good. Almost none of it is great. The bar has been raised, and there are too many TV shows that receive outsized praise when they barely manage to clear it.

Maniac is a show that could lazily be described as "ambitious" or "bold" or "unconventional" but its ambitions and boldness and unconventionality are squarely within the boundaries of prestige television. Is there an ornate introductory sequence that juxtaposes the show’s narrative with the Big Bang? Yes (and it ends with the argument that “all souls are on a quest to connect"). Is there a lot of pointed cultural satire about how technology might actually be ruining our lives? Yes (and if I were in middle school it would probably have blown my mind wide open). Is there a lot of visual trickery designed to make viewers wonder what’s real and what isn’t? Yes (and if you’re sensitive you probably shouldn’t get high before watching it). Does everything look incredibly expensive? Yes (and I’m sure it was). Is there a long, showy tracking shot? Yes (and that’s what you pay a Cary Joji Fukunaga for)!

So it’s with begrudging credit that I can say Maniac annoyed the hell out of me before it finally, in the end, either won me over or wore me down. Maniac is never as original or daring as it thinks it is, but it is impeccably crafted, and it always held my attention.

What is this show, anyway? Here’s the best I can explain without spoiling anything big. Maniac is set in a kind of parallel-universe, contemporary-ish New York City. Jonah Hill plays Owen Milgrim, the long-overlooked son of a wealthy family, who may or may not be schizophrenic. Emma Stone plays Annie Landsberg, a caustic addict near the top of what looks to be an impending downward spiral. Both sign up for an in-patient pharmaceutical trial in which they’ll be given a series of pills that promise, in the end, to cure the troubles and pains of anyone who takes them. About half of the show takes place in the real world. The other half takes place in the hallucinatory world induced by the pills, where Owen and Annie take on new identities in a series of surreal adventures with allegorical connections to the problems they need to solve.

You can see how Maniac assembled such top-tier talent, from director Fukunaga—hired, just yesterday, to helm the next James Bond movie—and stars Stone and Hill, who boast four Oscar nominations (and one win) between them. As a creative opportunity, Maniac must have seemed both tremendously challenging and tremendously fun. The show’s elastic premise allows everyone to wear a bunch of hats—particularly Stone and Hill, who get the chance to try out a bunch of wild costumes and accents. In one episode, Stone plays a femme fatale opposite Hill’s quick-witted safecracker; in another, Hill plays a sensitive goober at the center of a global scandal while Stone plays an amnesiac secret agent who proves ludicrously deadly with a pistol. (And those are two of the most normal scenarios Maniac offers; I’ll leave you to discover the crazier transformations for yourself.)