Long before it debuted on our screens, this six-part ABC series was generating all kinds of excitement. It screened at the Berlin Film Festival, it had a guaranteed berth in the US on the Sundance Channel, and it had sold to the BBC, too.

A home-grown story that combines horror, speculative fiction and the Dreaming, it was clearly something to be proud of, long before any of us had seen a second of it. But halfway through its first season (a second has already been commissioned), I reckon it's time to admit Cleverman doesn't quite match the hype.

In case you haven't yet seen it yet (you can catch the first three episodes on iview ahead of this week's fourth), here's the cheat-sheet.

Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard) is an Indigenous inner-city hipster. He runs a bar and is a bit of a chancer but for some reason is anointed the inheritor of special powers on behalf of his people when Uncle Jimmy (Jack Charles) dies, apparently after being torn apart by some mysterious creature.

Uncle Jimmy (Jack Charles), who bequeaths his supernatural powers to Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard).

Koen has a brother, Waruu (Rob Collins), who is on the surface of it a far worthier Cleverman. He's a social worker, tirelessly fighting for the rights not just of his own people but also a genetically separate group known as The Hairies (because they're really, really hairy). There's a media tycoon (Iain Glen, Jorah from Game of Thrones) with a do-gooder doctor wife (Frances O'Connor), a corrupt government minister (Andrew McFarlane), a sinister covert operative (Marcus Graham) and a sleazy reporter (Leeanna Walsman).

Oh, there's a brothel doing a fine line in kinky Hairy sex, too.

Subtlety is clearly not Cleverman's strong suit.

It's not just the stock types, the occasionally wooden dialogue and the sometimes clunky plotlines. It's the allegorical aspect of it. The Hairies – classed as "sub-humans" by some, hunted by the authorities, kept in detention centres far from the public eye – are clearly a substitute for asylum seekers. The Containment Authority that rounds them up is the show's Border Force.

Hairy Djukara (Tyson Towney) has a close shave with a couple of Containment Authority officers.

Perhaps the fact they share skin colour and facial characteristics with the Aboriginal inhabitants of The Zone (a segregated and walled area in the show's version of Redfern, though it plays more like the Gaza Strip) is presumably meant to suggest they are human just like us. Even if, technically speaking, they're not human at all. Never mind that some white Australians still struggle to accept that Aborigines are themselves human, a tension the show barely acknowledges, which is both a positive and a negative.

And can we just take a minute to talk about the hair? I know the effects are courtesy of a bunch of New Zealanders who earned their stripes on Lord of the Rings et al, but seriously, I've seen more convincing fake beards on the children at an end-of-year school concert. In a fight in the first episode, I was seriously expecting the rug on one dude's arms to be ripped off mid-grapple.

Maliyan (Adam Briggs) was in danger of losing his arm rugs during one fight scene.

In short, it's a bit of a muddle, Cleverman. And yet it is compelling.

I love that we're seeing a generation of Indigenous actors on screen, not just through this show but a whole slew of other projects that have largely emerged out of the ABC's Indigenous unit. I love that different perspectives and stories are starting to emerge as Aboriginal Australians move from fringe dwellers to centre stage in narrative terms. Redfern Now, the children's drama Ready for This, the documentary series First Contact and First Australians, the miniseries Secret River, the sometimes hilarious Black Comedy: these are all grappling with the meaning of Australia through fresh-yet-ancient eyes, and it's exciting.

Cleverman is definitely a part of this cultural shift, and an important one. That it has the boldness of vision to mash-up genre fiction and traditional culture and inner-city Indigenous life and modern Australian politics is well worth celebrating. That it doesn't always realise that vision as fully as it might is forgivable.

Faults and all, I'm sticking it with it to the end. But I'm counting on season two to show just how clever it can be.

Karl Quinn is on Facebook and on twitter @karlkwin