If you know Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low (1963) — and if you don’t, you’ve got some urgent viewing to do — you’re going to guess the major plot twist early on in Full Circle, Steven Soderbergh’s new six-part series. Both works concern the botched attempt to kidnap a boy from a wealthy family, a calamitous event that wreaks havoc among unexpectedly intertwined lives up and down the class scale.

Keep in mind that, for all his hyper-competence as a filmmaker, Soderbergh isn’t in Kurosawa’s league. Admittedly, almost no one is. The series’ complex multicharacter, multi-plot-strand, multinational narrative — a Soderberghian tendency by now — gets off to a slow, disjointed start, only gradually building suspense over the course of the two episodes currently available to view on Max. There’s a kind of baggy, unformed quality to the structure — too long and plodding in some sequences, racing along at a choppy pace in others — making it unsurprising to read that the show was being rewritten on the fly during production.

There’s an excellent cast doing all they can, featuring Timothy Olyphant and Claire Danes as Derek and Sam Browne, the parents of the targeted teenager, Jared (Ethan Stoddard). Dennis Quaid plays “Chef Jeff” McCusker, an abrasive celebrity chef whose multimedia empire, run by his daughter Sam, generates the family fortune. Jeff’s corrupt and clandestine business practices are indicated immediately by the loathsome French-braided ponytail he wears, by his smarmy way of protesting too much about all his good deeds and charitable works, and also by the goons who show up with bags of cash to assist him in a crisis. And there are many hints at secrets and lies involving tormented son-in-law Derek.