Nothing about Black Lightning feels familiar. That’s a good thing. It’s on The CW, but it doesn’t look like any other CW show (and not only because it’s the network’s first series with a black lead). It’s a superhero show, but it puts characters first and the super-powered stuff second. It’s not an origin story about a 20-something getting powers, either; it’s about rebirth for a man old enough to be their father.

Black Lightning focuses on Jefferson Pierce (the extremely charismatic Cress Williams), a retired vigilante. The balance between being a superhero and caring for his family was one his wife Lynn (Christine Adams) was unable to live with; Jefferson would come home beaten, bruised, and bloodied, and there was always a chance he wouldn’t come back at all. It was too hard to continue that way, so she didn’t. The family split up, and Jefferson hung up the cape (as it were). He became a high school principal, convincing himself that he was changing more lives in his community that way than he would as Black Lightning.

The series, developed by Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil, presents Jefferson’s story as just one part of a very complicated whole. The pilot starts with Jefferson’s older daughter Anissa (Nafessa Williams), a medical student who also teaches at the school, being arrested after participating in a protest that turned violent. Jefferson is then pulled over by police (for the third time that month, he says) on the way to a school fundraiser after being profiled as a potential robber. But as he challenges them, “I’m sure the description was of a black man dressed in a suit and tie, with a getaway car that’s a midsize Volvo wagon?” It’s not the only time Jefferson is wrongfully detained by police, and in that first instance both of his daughters immediately pull out their cell phones and start recording. Jefferson’s eyes sizzle with electricity during the incident, but he represses the urge to give in to his powers or to fight back. Instead, he just says “don’t shoot.”

Black Lightning is a very savvy show, and one that deals with a number of complex themes. It introduces us immediately to a fully-formed world in Freeland, where exposition is revealed naturally, and the characters genuinely feel like they’ve known each other for years. There’s also an intimacy to Black Lighting that can be warm, like with Jefferson’s family, or extremely cold, like in close-up, violent executions by gang members. The series is not interested in having Jefferson or anyone else take out legions of faceless bad guys. There is a lot of gun violence, but it has a point; while life on the streets of Freeland may be cheap, death means something on Black Lightning.

Most of the episodes available for review deal with Jefferson’s struggle to help his community in the face of uncontrollable violence. The police are overwhelmed, but one detective, Henderson (Damon Gupton), is a friend of Jefferson’s and dedicated to good police work. The series is full of people who believe they are doing what is right for their community, from Jefferson and Henderson to even a drug dealer name Lala, as he schools a young boy to be polite and shake hands, while also roughly reminding him that while he wastes time on his cell phone, “the white boys you should be selling to are being groomed to run the world.” And yet his actions are completely opposed to Jefferson’s, a man he respects in private but ridicules among his cronies. The dynamics are complicated.

It’s all summed up, in a way, by the show’s theme song, which is short and to the point: “I saw a superhero / he was black / he said this is for the street / Black Lightning’s back.”

Race is absolutely front and center in Black Lightning, and the politics of it are never murkier than in the mysterious figure of Tobias Whale (Marvin “Krondon” Jones III), the leader of The 100 gang. Tobias and Jefferson have a long and difficult history, but what is most interesting to note in these early episodes is Tobias — an albino black man — is flanked and aided by white henchmen. “Damn boss, you really hate black people,” Lala says to him in Tobias’ ornate lair. “I love black people,” Tobias replies. “But y’all keep us acting like newly freed slaves.”