I admit the possibility that I have unfair expectations for the new Netflix series “Marvel’s Daredevil,” 13 episodes of which will be available to stream on Friday.  During my comic book days, Daredevil, featuring the blind vigilante crime fighter Matt Murdock — situated somewhere between Spider-Man and Batman on the superhero spectrum — was the book I waited for each week. This was based entirely on Frank Miller’s several runs as a writer and artist on the title. The way he poeticized brutality and the dark weight he gave to the usual adolescent debates (good versus evil, weak versus strong, justice versus the law) made Daredevil the most evocative book of the 1980s superhero renaissance, outranking his own more celebrated work on Batman.  There was no way that “Marvel’s Daredevil” and its star, Charlie Cox (the Irish enforcer Owen Sleater in “Boardwalk Empire”), could live up to the Daredevil in my head. So take it with a grain of salt when I say I found the show kind of ordinary, while admiring the care and seriousness with which it’s been made. As crime shows go, it’s pretty good. As comic book shows go, it’s a demonstration of how tricky it can be to turn a comic book into a show.  “Marvel’s Daredevil,” created by Drew Goddard (a writer on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Alias” and “Lost”) and supervised by Steven DeKnight (an executive producer of Starz’s “Spartacus”), begins as Murdock and his buddy and fellow lawyer Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) are starting their idealistic storefront law firm in Hell’s Kitchen.  At night Murdock is already donning a black mask and whupping bad guys, using radarlike senses of hearing, touch and smell heightened by the same toxic chemicals that took his sight. (His skintight red superhero suit lies in the future, though it’s what he wears in the credits.) The criminals arrayed against him include an unctuous white businessman, a laughing Chinese woman, a surly Japanese man, two violent Russian brothers and, in the background, Murdock’s hulking alter ego, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), also a son of the neighborhood.  The show’s Murdock is less of a sadistic antihero than Mr. Miller’s comic book character, and Murdock’s father, depicted by Mr. Miller as an abusive drunk, is taken back to the character’s initial conception as a devoted father and a boxer who declines to throw a fight. But the central theme — the urge to vigilantism — remains. When Murdock-Daredevil throws a bad guy off a roof, it doesn’t make his victim a quadriplegic, as it did in the comic, but it does put him in a coma.  To a greater degree than in previous Netflix series, Mr. Goddard and Mr. DeKnight have taken account of binge viewing in structuring their narrative (on the evidence of the five episodes available for review). Where traditional television comic-book adaptations feel the need to account for their hero’s powers and introduce his central adversary quickly, “Marvel’s Daredevil” takes its time. Our first glimpse of Fisk (more commonly known as the Kingpin) is delayed for several episodes. A full explanation of Murdock’s super senses and the impressionistic “sight” those senses give him (a key motif of the comic books), arrives even later.  This willingness to delay our narrative gratification is a pleasant change from the norm, but it reflects a pace that could be charitably described as leisurely. It’s not that nothing’s happening: There are rounds of infighting among the multiple criminals, the cases that Murdock and Nelson take on, and the young lawyers’ romantic byplay with a client who becomes their secretary and a nurse who learns the masked hero’s identity (Deborah Ann Woll and Rosario Dawson, both excellent).  It’s just that too much of the story feels indistinct, like disconnected chunks of a much-better-than-average cop show. I found myself waiting for the fight scenes, which tend to go on too long but are often interesting to look at, as with a basement brawl in Episode 2 reminiscent of the Park Chan-wook film “Oldboy.”  There’s also a divided quality to Mr. Cox’s performance. He’s good as the sensitive Murdock, whose most prominent (and highly symbolic) power is his ability to hear people’s heartbeats and discern whether they’re telling the truth. But he doesn’t make you feel the harshness and brutality that emerge in Daredevil. To be fair, that may have to do, in part, with this fan’s feeling that he looks younger and softer than the comic book character. It’s also something that could change over the course of eight more episodes.  Mr. Cox is ably supported by Mr. D’Onofrio (once he shows up), Ms. Woll, Ms. Dawson, Mr. Henson and Vondie Curtis-Hall as the formerly crusading reporter Ben Urich. The cast also includes the first-rate actor Scott Glenn as Stick, who in the comic book is the ninja who teaches Murdock how to use his abilities.  “Marvel’s Daredevil” is the first series in a five-show deal between Marvel and Netflix focusing on what are called Marvel’s “street-level heroes.” Perhaps Mr. Goddard and Mr. DeKnight felt that street-level heroics called for a straightforward, largely realistic treatment. (As opposed, say, to the heavily stylized, hyper-violent and hyper-romantic approach Mr. Miller employs in his “Sin City” films.) The result, while eminently watchable, isn’t the Daredevil some of us remember.  A version of this review appears in print on April 9, 2015, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Sightless Hero, Ever Attuned to Evil. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Charlie Cox stars as the sightless Marvel crime-fighter with heightened super-senses and, as his secret identity, the lawyer Matt Murdock, in this Netflix series.