Instead of going in the direction of dystopian thriller (“Mr. Robot”), morality play (“Fargo”) or family drama (“The Americans”), however, “Patriot” goes for a peculiar brand of earnest farce. John Tavner, played by Michael Dorman, a New Zealand-born actor new to American TV, begins the series in a funk because he has mistakenly killed a male hotel maid instead of the rogue physicist who was his target. Baked and moping in Amsterdam, he writes a plaintive song about his blunder: “Wondering why there are male hotel maids in other countries/You never see that/Never see that.”

Before John can go all the way down the rabbit hole of guilt and shame, he is rescued by his father — who happens to be America’s “director of intelligence” and is played by the wonderful Terry O’Quinn — and sent on a new mission, which, like his earlier one, is aimed at stopping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. It involves adopting a cover as an employee of a Midwestern pipe company, something John is perilously unequipped for, as a way to deliver large sums of money to allies in Luxembourg.

The mission goes wrong, in an escalating series of disasters that include a violent confrontation with a family of Brazilian wrestlers and a crucial operative’s dropping dead after a racquetball match. Sometimes the humor goes from farcical to purely physical and visual, as in a joke involving the physiognomy of the Canadian character actor Julian Richings (known for playing Death in “Supernatural”).

The pilot, which was posted more than a year ago, gets the show’s combination of black humor and wistful family dynamics just right. Exercises in sustained tone are tricky, though, and subsequent episodes (five were available for review) are less even. A reliance on long close-ups of pensive faces, and Mr. Conrad’s fetish for scenes of group urination, start to pall. When the framework sags, you fall back on the casting: Mr. O’Quinn, and Kurtwood Smith as John’s skeptical boss at the pipe company, effortlessly embody the delicate balancing act Mr. Conrad is attempting.