Marvel's Luke Cage is by far the most intriguing, most political and least cartoonish of Netflix's fast-growing folio of interconnected Marvel franchises. With the imposing and charismatic Mike Colter well at home in the role of nascent superhero Luke Cage – having already played the character in Marvel's Jessica Jones – the series always had a head start on itself. The fact that Colter was to be surrounded by the likes of Mahershala Ali, Alfre Woodard and The Wire's Frankie Faison meant there was never going to be any lack of gravity on the screen.

The early episodes succeed perfectly well as crime-and-corruption drama – it's a testament to the character writing that Cage's unbreakable skin and superhuman strength is the least interesting part of the story to begin with. But there's plenty more going on.

Series creator Cheo Hodari Coker is keenly aware of the rare opportunity he has – not just in creating a show populated mainly by black characters, but in being able to create a milieu that isn't merely a photocopy of the version of black culture that predominates across American entertainment media. The 21st-century Harlem of Luke Cage isn't wall-to-wall hip-hop and the N-word being sprayed around. When that word does arrive, it arrives with a thud – and with characters ready to dispute the assumption that tossing it around is an empowering act.

The soundtrack tends to eschew rap in favour of soulful numbers by the likes of Charles Bradley and Raphael Saadiq, while the score by Adrian Younge and A Tribe Called Quest's Ali Shaheed Muhammad recalls genre films of the '70s. The musical choices reflect the fact that the character of Cage was created (by white men) at the height of the blaxploitation era, and they certainly imply no hostility towards hip-hop on the part of Coker – he's a Biggie Smalls biographer who has referred to this series as "the Wu-Tang-ification of the Marvel universe". Still, it's quite a change.

The story finds Cage, post-Jessica Jones, spending his days working in a barber shop owned by the kindly, streetwise Pop (Faison), and his nights working at a club owned by a murderous criminal known as Cottonmouth (Ali). Cottonmouth has been bankrolled by his politician cousin, Mariah (Woodard), who campaigns on a platform of keeping Harlem black. There will, as they say, be blood.