Courtney A. Kemp has spent the past twelve years giving viewers a glimpse of gang life via the Power franchise on Starz. In Nemesis, her first show for Netflix, she teams with Tani Marole to do a psychological deep dive into a rivalry on both sides of the law.

NEMESIS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A mansion in Beverly Hills on Halloween. A man and his girlfriend are making out at the party and want to go upstairs to have a quickie.

The Gist:  The man pays a guard to let him into one of the rooms, but then Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel), a master thief, and his wife Ebony (Cleopatra Coleman) get down to business. He changes into a 1920s gangster costume and a mask; she keeps the guard at bay. He goes to the basement to let his crew into the mansion, and they rob a high-stakes poker game going on in one of the back rooms. His crew literally walks out with the cash in sacks with dollar signs on them. One of the crew freelances a bit and steals a rare watch off of one of the player’s wrists.

In the meantime, Lt. Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law), an LAPD detective, is having a busy day. He goes to visit his father Amos (Moe Irvin), a former gangbanger, to pay his monthly bills and curse him out for letting his brother get into that life and get killed. Then he rescues the young daughter of a cartel bigwig from the clutches of a rival gang. When he gets back to the station, he hears about the Halloween robbery from Det. Rick Viggiano (Mike O’Malley), and Stiles is convinced it was executed by the crew of four he’s been chasing for two years.

Coltrane’s crew usually does four big heists per year, but the Halloween heist was the first in seven months, due to a personal tragedy for Coltrane and Ebony. Ebony lost their baby very late in her pregnancy, and it’s certainly changed her viewpoint on what Coltrane does for a living and her role in his heists. But the crew is expecting two more jobs before the year is out so they can pay their bills. Coltrane promises Ebony that after these two jobs, they’re done. He also tells Ebony’s sister Charlie (Sophina Brown), who gets the intel on the targets his crew hits.

Stiles has been obsessed with catching Coltrane and his crew since his partner was shot and killed by them two years prior. It’s gotten to the point where he has tension with his wife Candace (Gabrielle Dennis) about how he continuously prioritizes work over her and their teenage son Noah (Cedric Joe). That comes to a head when Stiles ditches Noah to respond to a robbery of three neighboring jewelry and antique stores by Coltrane’s crew, who were after specific sacks of untraceable diamonds.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Courtney A. Kemp and Tani Marole, Nemesis has the feeling of Kemp’s Power franchise. It also evokes the memory of the classic Michael Mann film Heat.

Our Take: There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the story in Nemesis. It’s the cop that’s obsessed with a particular case vs. the career criminal who is looking to get out of the game. We’ve seen both sides of this equation many, many times, both separately and together. But what Kemp and Marole have managed to do is infuse the age-old plot with compelling characters, thanks to good casting and an emphasis on character depth.

At this point, Coltrane is the more interesting of the two main characters, mainly because he’s a thief with ethics and attention to detail. He hated that one of his crew, Deon (Quincy Isaiah), stole the watch during the Halloween heist, mainly because it can be traced if the Deon decides to fence it. When the diamond district robbery results in two deaths, he can be seen in his car letting out his frustration. His goal is to get in and get out without bloodshed, and whenever he can’t achieve that, it frustrates him to no end.

But the situation behind why he and Ebony actually want to get out of the game is what interests us. It’s not burnout or that he thinks he’ll get caught. The reasons are extremely human, and that’s what makes his situation more compelling than usual.

At least for the moment, Stiles has the more conventional story arc, and while we appreciate Law’s intensity in the role, for now there isn’t anything with his story we haven’t seen before. Where his story can take a turn is his background, with his father and late brother being gangbangers. Instead of going into that life, that pushed him to the other side of the ledger. But he’s towing a fine line psychologically, and he even realizes it.

Performance Worth Watching: Y’lan Noel is very watchable as Coltrane, mainly because he brings ethics, morals and class to a character that’s ostensibly a thief and a killer.

Sex And Skin: There are some sex scenes, but no real nudity in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Coltrane watches news coverage of the diamond district robbery, with Stiles addressing the ringleader straight to the camera, “Before today, you had all the options in the world. Now you have two: jail or the morgue. You make the call.”

Sleeper Star: Not sure why, but we liked when Cedric Joe’s character Noah said to his dad “Whatever, bro,” as Stiles runs to his car and leaves him on the street to wait for an Uber.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Best retire from these streets before these streets retire you,” Amos says to Sitles.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There is a lot about Nemesis that’s clunky and cliche. But we liked the performances of both Law and Noel, and we hope that the complexity of both of their characters’ lives will be explored with more depth as the series goes along.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.