From good doctors to sexy doctors to funny doctors to Chicago doctors, network television has no shortage of medical professionals roaming the fictional hospital hallways. Now NBC has a new twist on the age-old formula: What if there was a doctor with… face blindness?

Okay, to be fair, face blindness is just one of the many quirks that define Zachary Quinto’s brilliant neurosurgeon Dr. Oliver Wolf. He also swims in the Hudson River, is obsessed with his plants, hates dealing with his coworkers, and will do anything for his patients, including smuggling them all over town on his motorcycle if he thinks they need a day off. Still, it’s hard to ignore the hook, which sounds like the template for a joke, despite being at least partially based in reality.

Brilliant mindswhich premieres on September 23, is loosely inspired by real-life neurologist Oliver Sacks, who suffered from prosopagnosia (also called face blindness) and published stories about unique medical cases like his own in popular books such as “The 1985.” The man who mistook his wife for a hatSacks was born in interwar London and began his career in the 1960s. Brilliant minds The action takes place in a crowded, understaffed hospital in modern-day Bronx, which is the only place in the city still willing to try Dr. Wolf’s rule-breaking approach.

The problem is that the exact nature of this violation is not particularly consistent. Sometimes Dr. Wolf seems to miss the social problems of The good doctor‘s Shaun Murphy, sometimes the blunt complacency of Dr. Gregory House and other times the huge heart and problematic backstory of Grey’s Anatomyis Meredith Grey. The show portrays him as both an introverted loner and a rebellious free spirit in ways that never quite add up—especially in terms of how much, if at all, his face-blindness has shaped his eccentric personality. (It’s a detail that becomes less and less important as the series progresses.)

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The fact that the character seems coherent at all is a credit to Quinto, who is best known for his roles as a villain on television and as a Vulcan on television. Brilliant minds lets him play a warmer, more human character for once, and it’s a welcome change. Quinto has natural comedic skills that allow him to make even weaker jokes work on network TV. When his best friend, psychiatrist Dr. Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry), tells him he should be more open about his illness, he responds with mock shock and a straight face, “Carol! It’s 2024, we don’t call homosexuality an illness.” It’s a line that might seem cheesy if Quinto didn’t deliver it so casually, and if his chemistry with Perry wasn’t so strong.

Less successful is Dr. Wolf’s mentoring of four superficially drawn Gen Z interns who seem to have come over from a cheesier show. (One character’s entire personality consists of taking psychiatric drugs and not being afraid to talk about it!) There are also uneven flashbacks that show how Wolf was shaped by his two doctor parents: his cold, logical mother (Donna Murphy) and his warm but problematic father (Gray Powell). More intriguing is a potential, slow-blooming flirtation with a colleague played by Teddy Sears, who previously played Quinto’s lover in the first season of. American Horror Story.

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Aside from the cast, the show’s big draw is that it deals exclusively with the kind of bizarre neurological disorders that a traditional medical drama might only cover once or twice a season. There’s the mother who wakes up after surgery convinced her children are imposters; the motorcycle gang member who’s considering surgery that will make him lose the ability to form new memories; and a group of teenagers who en masse believe they’re all pregnant.

Brilliant minds leans into the “freak show” quality of strange medical cases by using horror movie imagery to dramatize how its patients experience their illness. One patient perceives memory loss as a thick fog rolling in; another sees “ghosts” of his dead Army buddies. Anyone who has ever fallen down a rabbit hole of medical mysteries on Wikipedia will find something to enjoy here, even if the show is careful to balance its potentially exploitative quality with Dr. Wolf’s passionate, patient-centered humanism.

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In fact, in the first six episodes shown to critics, Brilliant minds regularly veers back and forth between unsettling and downright cheesy, like when a character tells Wolf that his face-blindness is a gift because it inspires him to “look deeper” to see the things other people miss. It’s hard to say what the tone will be in the long run, though the early episodes at least suggest the show is willing to try things out until it decides what fits.

While Brilliant minds doesn’t immediately reach the heights of must-see TV series, but it’s entertaining in the familiar way that TV series have come to expect. Between the exciting case-of-the-week mysteries and Quinto’s confident lead performance, there’s room for the series to develop into something truly compelling. It just needs to figure out what personality suits its face-blind protagonist.