‘Chance’ review

“I’m a medical professional,” Hugh Laurie’s character says, indignantly, in the new Hulu series “Chance.” “I’m not some Raymond Chandler character.”

Both ends of that statement are true. Eldon Chance, Laurie’s character, is a doctor — and a fancy one, a neuropsychiatrist — but he’s a pretty shabby specimen compared with Gregory House, the improbably brilliant diagnostician Laurie played for eight seasons on “House.”

And while “Chance” (the first two of 10 episodes became available Wednesday) is a noirlike thriller, its hero isn’t one of Chandler’s noble tough guys. He’s more like an Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor character. If those names aren’t familiar, they’re the screenwriters of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” and Chance is a damaged, obsessional sap along the lines of James Stewart’s Scottie in that classic film.

Add in the San Francisco setting, a possibly duplicitous blonde with multiple identities (Gretchen Mol in the Kim Novak role) and smaller touches like a flower-shop surveillance scene and a quiet moment on a bench inside a city landmark, and the first five episodes of “Chance” feel like an extended “Vertigo” tribute. They don’t feel much like “Vertigo” itself, though. The mood is glum rather than grim and eerie, and plot developments drift in more slowly than the San Francisco fog.

“Chance” is based on a book by Kem Nunn, a darkunderbelly-of-California specialist who created the television series along with Alexandra Cunningham (“Desperate Housewives,” “Prime Suspect”). Its significantly named protagonist — Chance as in both fate and the opportunity for redemption — is a depressed dad in the process of divorce. In his psychiatric practice, he’s a consultant who writes reports but doesn’t treat patients.

“Chance” keeps threatening to blossom into the mordant comedy it ought to be, but the dawdling pace and a general dreariness keep it tied down. If the show gets a little less noir-heavy and a little more wacky, it could be worth tracking.