“This is not a city, or a job, for nice guys.” — Detective Harvey Bullock.

Batman’s commissioner James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) finally gets his origin story in Fox TV’s “Gotham.” For those unaware, this will be a Batman-less series about the Dark Knight’s side characters. It’s also a show with questions, only some to do with the show itself.

The first is answered right away. Gotham looks like present-day New York City mixed with an eerie 1950s Los Angeles noir tinge. But as the “Lost” writers told its viewers, even that answer leads to another question. Since the clothes are contemporary, when does “Gotham” occur? Is it 2014 or an alternate Earth’s past?

“Gotham” opens with Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova) climbing and jumping. She steals groceries and wallets, albeit clumsily because this is an origin story. Being that Kyle eventually becomes Catwoman, the milk she steals is for a cat. Then, Kyle spies the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents.

Again, another question springs. Since young Bruce looks like young Bruce in “Batman Begins,” is this a reprise of Christopher Nolan’s film? It’s not—but only because Warner Bros., which holds the film rights to Batman, won’t allow it.

But let’s not pause too long, for “Gotham” quickly shifts to Gotham’s police headquarters where a criminal steals a gun from a very lazy cop. This allows Gordon to immediately demonstrate the people skills and alternative thinking that’ll come in handy as he navigates through the twin sewers of a corrupt police force he must cleanse and the criminals he must incarcerate.

But—you guessed it—another question: The chemistry between Gordon and his corrupt partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) is too perfunctory. One gets the feeling they are only playing the role as it’s written on a script. They need to add a personal touch to the role to turn the characters into three-dimensional characters; otherwise, this is going to be a long year.

Thankfully, McKenzie shows more spirit interacting with the rest of Gotham’s characters, and some of those characters hit the deck running. Most notably, Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor).

Cobblepot starts as a bumbling sidekick, which is clever given his Penguin future. Seconds after he plays the fool to Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), he turns Hannibal Lecter on a stool pigeon. Later, he incites mistrust in his gang while handing Gordon and Bullock over to a gangster boss. Taylor immediately taps into Cobblepot’s gleeful psychopathy. Cobblepot looks like a child getting the perfect Christmas present as he bludgeons and stabs his way to arch nemesis status.

Another departure is that Gordon’s fiancé, Barbara (Erin Richards), is played with spunk, sex appeal and a secret past. Given that we’ve only seen the eventual Mrs. Gordon as a woman on the far side of midlife, it never crossed my mind that she was once a vibrant character playing an important role in Gordon’s ethical development.

But Gotham is more than just a psychological look at the fight between good and bad. It’s also a police procedural. This part plays out similar to the ‘50s detective series “Dragnet.” When Gordon and Bullock question a suspect in the Wayne murders, McKenzie delivers Gordon’s lines with the monotone, rapid-fire intensity of Jack Webb’s Joe Friday from the classic show.

Harkening to TV’s most important police detective show is a nice touch for chronicling the origins of both cinema and the comics’ most famous detective. If “Gotham” can live up to that pedigree is just another question waiting for its answer.