The Batwoman series has a stylish look and a good heart. But it also has problems.

The story is pretty straightforward. Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) returns to Gotham, which her cousin Bruce Wayne has abandoned (something other iterations of the character have done in several storylines now, including the older Birds of Prey series and the more recent Titans). After breaking into Wayne's office in his shuttered downtown skyscraper, she is surprised by Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson), son of the late Lucius Fox, who alone seems to know of Wayne's secret identity. Kane accidentally triggers the entrance to the Batcave, which is under the skyscraper and not Wayne Manor after all, and quickly dons the suit to fight villains. Soon, she alters the outfit to suit her style, adding red highlights and a garish red wig, and Batwoman swiftly fills the Batman-shaped hole in Gotham City.

With a fully corrupt police department (there's no Jim Gordon here), Gotham is also patrolled by a for-profit security force known as The Crows, led by Jacob Kane (Dougray Scot), who is Kate Kane's father and who doesn't have much love for vigilantes. Among his top officers is Sophie Moore (Meagan Tandy), who was Kate's lover until they were discovered together during basic training and Kate, but not Sophie, was thrown out of the Army. Kane's stepdaughter Mary Hamilton (Nicole Kang) is a socialite and media influencer in the public eye but secretly runs a clinic for Gotham's needy; she eventually discovers her stepsister's secret identity and joins Fox in assisting her. Batwoman's archnemesis is the villain Alice, who leads the Wonderland Gang and is not-so-secretly Kate Kane's long lost sister (more on her later).

Although the Batwoman character debuted in the comics as Batman's love interest in the mid-1950s to offset complaints that the Batman and Robin dynamic was too gay, she was reinvented in 2006 -- more than 40 years after she was dropped from the comics -- as a lesbian hero. That's the storyline used in the series; in fact, almost all of the female characters in this series are lesbians which, while a coup for representation, seems statistically improbable.

Foremost among the series' problems, of course, is its titular hero. As Wayne's cousin, Kane makes a certain amount of sense as the heir to the Bat cowl, and her extensive military and post-military training makes her a suitable candidate for the job.

But Rose bowed out of the show after a single season. Although she initially blamed injuries from a stunt as the reason, the matter became a fairly public spat with the studio, with her claiming she quit because of an unsafe and abusive environment and the studio claiming she was fired for behavior issues. She was replaced by Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie), a homeless ex-con who stumbles upon the lost Bat gear and just happens to have the combat skills necessary to take up the mantle. She is also a lesbian, to maintain that continuity. Oh, and she also has a deeply personal tie to Alice, and she also happens to own the last surviving flower of a rare species that can cure all ills and is highly sought by yet another villain, Safiyah (Shivaani Ghai), who is cooperating with cosmetics mogul Roman Sionis (Peter Outerbridge), aka Black Mask, and the hypnotic Dr. Evelyn Rhyme (Laura Mennell), aka Enigma, who is the Riddler's daughter.

The writers of this series tried way too hard to shoehorn Wilder into Kane's slot, but consequently they packed too much story into a tiny space. An audience will only buy so many coincidences. They would have been much wiser to introduce a character without so many inexplicable connections to the storyline, even if it meant Wilder had to work a little harder to be accepted as the Bat. It also would have been better simply to kill Kate Kane off, even if her off-screen death would have been an unsatisfying twist; telling viewers she was dead and then bringing her back with a new face (Wallis Day) and jumbled memories is another stumble for the series.

Yet another problem is recurring villain Alice, aka Beth Kane (Rachel Skarsten). She is, of course, Kate Kane's long lost twin sister, who was believed to be dead after the crash that killed their mother when they were young; no body was ever found, and she was "rescued" by August Cartwright (John Emmett Tracy), who wanted a companion for his disfigured son Mouse, and she grew up being psychologically tortured and learning how to craft fake faces out of real skin. (Initially, those faces seem to have a reasonable shelf life before they begin to spoil, but as the series advances, they apparently become permanent replacement faces that never need fixing and somehow never rot.)

No real quibbles with Skarsten's performance, which is suitably diabolical, homicidal and twisted for a Gotham baddie, but the repeated attempts by some characters to rehabilitate her and get her back on the side of the angels is ... well, let's consider first how many people she's brutally murdered. You don't come back from that and just decide to be nice. And her first-season companion, her now grownup pal Mouse (Sam Littlefield), is an inconsistent mess.

On the plus side, we have the Bat team (although the team builds slowly, not all coming at once into knowledge of the Bat's identity). Luke Fox and Mary Hamilton are consistently good in their roles, providing much-needed support to both Batwomen and bringing some much-needed emotional depth to the series. Sophie Moore is usually reliable but is a little inconsistent over the course of two seasons. On the other hand, writers don't seem sure what to do with Jacob Kane, who wavers between good cop and bad cop, depending on the needs of the episode.

Overall, the series has a stylish design that sets it apart from other Bat outings. It's got a good look, and fairly good pacing. The success of the show hinges on the woman under the cowl, however, and it's a shame that -- for whatever reason, we may never know the truth for sure -- Rose walked away. She set a solid tone for the character that I liked. She was believable as both Kate Kane and Batwoman. Leslie certainly has done a lot to make the role her own, but as Wilder she lacks the confidence that she needs to be Batwoman.