‘Wonder Man’ again shows MCU series superior to movies

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before, since I’m admittedly something of a broken record on the subject, but I very much prefer Marvel’s television series, which tend to be fleet, original and unpredictable, to its movies, which tend not to be.

“Loki,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Moon Knight,” “Echo,” “WandaVision” and its spinoff “Agatha All Along” — all (among others) are worth watching, even the ones that are dumped after a season.

Developing longer stories with less money, the TV shows’ makers need to be inventive, creative with their resources, so they invest in characters and ideas rather than special effects and action.

“Wonder Man,” whose eight episodes just premiered on Disney+, is perhaps the most grounded of these series. Created by Destin Daniel Cretton (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) and Andrew Guest (who has written for “Community” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), the series is a (generally) sweet, disarming tale of actors in Hollywood, tricked up with picture-business details that you don’t need to be well versed on the Marvel Cinematic Universe to appreciate.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Simon Williams, who as a child became a fan of a B-movie superhero called Wonder Man — not a “real” superhero, in this reality, merely a fiction.

Now in his 30s, he’s a struggling actor in Hollywood, good enough to land a small part in an “American Horror Story” episode, but not clever enough to keep from slowing down the production with questions and suggestions when all he needs to do is deliver a couple of lines before a monster bites his head off. He loses the part and a girlfriend directly afterward.

Taking in a revival house matinee of “Midnight Cowboy,” he meets Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who is back from having played the Mandarin — that is, he acted the part of a terrorist called the Mandarin, believing it was just a job — in “Iron Man 3” and providing comedy relief in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” The character here is more fleshed out, something of a mess (but 13 years sober, he likes to point out). Before it all went wrong, Trevor played King Lear (in Croydon), appeared in “Coronation Street” and in a movie with Glenda Jackson, was off-off-off Broadway in “The Skin Our Teeth” and briefly had the lead in a hospital show with Joe Pantoliano, who’s very funny playing himself.

Slattery tells Simon that European art director Von Kovak (Zlatko Burić) is rebooting Wonder Man, a role Simon feels born to play. He makes an end run around his unconvinced agent, Janelle (X Mayo), and wheedles an audition — where he again meets Trevor, auditioning for Barnaby, Wonder Man’s sidekick.

There are wheels behind wheels in this setup. It’s a love story, above all — “Midnight Cowboy,” not an accidental choice, is more of a touchstone than any Marvel movie.

Simon does have powers — things shake, break or explode around him when he’s upset, and his strength can become super in a tight spot — which puts him in the sights of the Department of Damage Control, which would like to contain him. But he struggles to keep them secret, especially in light of something called the Doorman Clause, which prohibits anyone with superpowers from working in film or television, all Simon lives for.

There is little in the way of action, and you won’t miss it. The fate of the world is never in question, but a callback for a second audition means everything.

As things progress, Trevor will become a mentor to Simon. As is common in stories of love and friendship, a betrayal will be revealed, but if you have seen even a few such stories, you know how that’s going to go, and will be glad it does.

I was genuinely anxious for them, as friends, more so than just wondering how such and such a superhero (or team) might defeat such and such a supervillain (or team).