Like the art of ballet, “Étoile,” a television show about ballet, has its ups and downs. Sometimes you want to toss confetti in the air to celebrate how deftly it dives into the intelligence and humor of ballet culture. It lives largely in the world of comedy, which is rare for a ballet story. Yet it also shows a commitment to world-class dance, with snippets from classic works like George Balanchine’s “Rubies.” And it arrives with a narrative miracle — nary an eating disorder in sight.

But then comes a scene, or sadly a dance, that makes you want to throw that confetti in the trash. The first time the show seesaws between paradise and purgatory happens in its first five minutes. “Étoile,” on Amazon Prime Video, begins on a poignant note as a young girl, alone in a dark studio, follows along to a ballet class saved on a smartphone. A cleaning woman appears in the doorway to let her know that she has only one more floor to get through. This is the dancer’s mother, who has been secretly recording company class for her.

“I’ve barely gotten to frappés,” young SuSu (LaMay Zhang) says to her mom. With a heavy heart, SuSu fast forwards to petit allegro, and an overhead shot pulls back, rendering her tinier and tinier as her feet cross back and forth in springy jumps. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” its beat echoing her rhythm, takes over, and we’re dropped into a pulsating nightclub.

There, a tipsy and inane conversation about Tchaikovsky and Aaron Copland ensues: Who would win in a fight? (Who cares?) And that generates a new topic: famous composers who had syphilis.

Scenes like the one in the nightclub are deflating, especially for a series created by the imaginative husband-and-wife team of Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. In previous Sherman-Palladino creations like “Gilmore Girls” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” actors weave gestures and words to give them an eccentric, choreographic flair, employing dialogue so muscularly arranged that when it really takes off, it swings. Characters are sometimes cartoonish, but rhythm gives them life. The best scenes almost always remind me of a dance.

As for “Étoile,” it is anchored more by a setup than a plot. Two directors of ballet companies, Geneviève (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Paris and Jack (Luke Kirby) in New York, decide to swap talent, partly as a way to sell tickets. Ballet, as Geneviève says, was dealt a huge blow by “the mighty reign of king COVID.”

“Étoile” takes on a lot — the impossible business of running a dance company in 2025, smarmy donors, institutional infighting and more — but it can also live in the weeds, where there’s space to crack a joke about regional ballet. There are also real-world dance people, including Tiler Peck, the virtuosic, self-assured New York City Ballet principal, who plays the fictional Eva, a dancer who loses her focus during a performance of “Swan Lake” and now must be shadowed by Dr. Speer, a whispering therapist in charge of getting her back onstage. Peck is a riot. She never drops the act. In Season 2 (the show has already been renewed), she could carry an episode.

In the main character department, though, there are problems. Jack and Geneviève are better served in scenes that keep them apart; their banter feels forced. The New York company’s aging artistic director, Nicholas (David Haig), with his affected, wistful voice as he gasses on about the old days, is perplexing: No part of him is funny or endearing.

And then there’s the next generation. Tobias (Gideon Glick) is a young, innovative choreographer who lacks social skills and, as far as I can tell, lasting talent, though he is considered a boy genius. (This, of course, happens in life.) Tobias wears headphones, listens to metal at full blast and has tantrums. His biggest meltdown happens during the premiere of a new ballet: He stops the performance and remakes the dance in real time in front of the audience.

Like most of the contemporary ballet on the show, Tobias’ creation is anything but inventive. After the new version is finally performed — complete with portable ballet barres in a derivative William Forsythe touch — Tobias dashes onto the stage for a passionate kiss with his lead dancer. This was unforgivable. “Étoile” went Hallmark.

But the show has something crucial going for it: The guiding star that is Cheyenne (Lou de Laâge), the French étoile traded against her will from the Paris company to the New York one. She’s a bulldozer, a climate activist-ballerina who has been sent away, to her horror. “They’re going to make me do ‘Stars and Stripes,’” she says, referring to Balanchine’s patriotic 1958 ballet.