If you loved “Schitt’s Creek,” and looked forward to the new series from its co-creator Dan Levy because you were hoping for another “Schitt’s Creek” ... well, be prepared to act like a disgruntled pelican, because “Big Mistakes” is something else entirely. There are, on the surface, some similarities: A perpetually bickering brother/sister duo (Levy and Taylor Ortega) are central to the action, as is their somewhat larger-than-life mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf). But where the beloved “Schitt’s Creek” was all about sweetness and acceptance and lovable eccentricity, “Big Mistakes” — co-created by Levy and Rachel Sennott — is about yelling. Lots of yelling. Very, very loud yelling. Often very amusing yelling, particularly by Levy and Metcalf, but make no mistake: This show has a dark, albeit noisy, vibe.

Nicky (Levy) is a minister at the community church in his small New Jersey town, struggling with whether he should come out as gay and reveal his boyfriend, Tareq (Jacob Gutierrez), to his congregation. His sister Morgan (Ortega), a would-be actor, teaches public school and lives with her longtime boyfriend Max (Jack Innanen). Both siblings are doing their best to cope with Linda, who’s in the midst of a very dramatic run for mayor of the town, and their too-perfect sister Natalie (Abby Quinn), who is running Linda’s campaign and is her obvious favorite. (Metcalf, in the opening episode, tells us everything we need to know about Linda’s relationship with her children when she announces the two of them as “Nicholas and ... Morgan,” as if for a moment she’d forgotten her second daughter’s name.) Oh, and a brief encounter in a convenience store involving a stolen necklace gets Nicky and Morgan irretrievably tied to organized crime. As the title says, this is a big mistake.

For its eight episodes, “Big Mistakes” takes us through Nicky and Morgan’s harrowing and frequently shrieky adventures while they do “favors” for a group of sinister dudes with Russian accents and flashy taste in jewelry. And that’s the problem: The bad guys are interchangeable — they’re like every mobster you’ve seen in every organized-crime-themed movie or TV show — and not very compelling. Nicky and Morgan and Linda and Natalie, particularly when they’re not yelling, are interesting, nuanced, funny characters, and you wish they were in a show that didn’t involve them having to constantly interact with all those dull baddies.

Levy’s Nicky, despite his youth-pastor wardrobe (why does he always have a long, dangling belt on?), shares some DNA with David Rose of “Schitt’s Creek”; not least his excellent eyebrow-wrangling and his hilarious way of seeming perpetually on the verge of utter panic. (“YOU’RE BEING VERY DRAMATIC,” Nicky screams at Morgan, dramatically.) He and Ortega, who makes skilled comedy from Morgan’s delight at finding out that she’s rather good at crime, make a charismatic team. But you wish that this character could have a little more time to grow; there’s something quite touching in his interactions with Tareq, or in the way he looks hurt when a mobster notes that his sister is tougher than he is, but too often Nicky’s actions don’t entirely make sense (and aren’t quite funny enough to make that forgivable).

But I would have happily watched an entire season of just Nicky and his mother, whose extremely complex relationship is in dire need of an enormous amount of therapy. (Linda, at one point, comments about the pain of giving birth to Nicky, which he quickly counters by pointing out that he was adopted. “I birthed you emotionally,” Linda shoots back. “Which is just as painful.”) Levy’s clearly not afraid to share a screen with an absolute legend — rest in peace, dear Catherine O’Hara — and the great Metcalf owns this series; things perk up whenever she’s on screen. This woman is perpetually dialed up to 11, and in the hands of a lesser performer might have been thoroughly exhausting, but Metcalf makes her so funny you can’t look away. Linda, at one point, proves her own trustworthiness by blabbing somebody’s elaborate secret to her children and saying solemnly, “That is a story I will take to my grave.” You believe that she believes it — while you’re laughing.

It’s understandable that Levy might want to wander far from the “Schitt’s Creek” model; lightning rarely strikes twice, and “Schitt’s Creek” in its final seasons found true greatness. “Big Mistakes” suffers in comparison, as most shows would; maybe it needs a little more time to find its way. And maybe the volume turned down just a bit.

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'BIG MISTAKES'

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Netflix

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