I watched the first episode of Maria Bamford’s new sitcom Lady Dynamite over the weekend when I was bedridden with flu. I assumed I was delirious. In the space of around 30 minutes I watched something that addressed me directly through the screen, played with timelines and messed with the colour palette. At one point I was sure the lead character turned into a goat. Or maybe a sheep. I’m not kidding. 

Bamford, who has been a much-lauded stand-up for years, stars in this strikingly fresh series, which has just about enough of a toehold in conventional sitcom formats to draw in fans who might prefer Seinfeld or Friends. It’s pretty much completely bonkers with a great subtext of championing women of a certain age. 

In the first episode we meet Bamford when she is fronting a TV commercial for a shampoo that appears to make your life perfect. I think it’s an advert. Or actually a dream. Our star wants to create some community spirit by buying a bench. Except that when she tells her community about the bench they give her the metaphorical finger so she decides to do an al fresco stand-up gig for them instead.

This is just one of the many places where the show gets wiggy. A local cop turns out to be fellow comic Patton Oswalt, who breaks out of character to say that it's a cliche to do stand-up in sitcoms. Seinfeld and Louis CK did it. Even he did it in his pilots that weren’t picked up…

But Bamford, in the show, has to kickstart her career somehow. Her hapless manager Bruce (terrible name for an idiot) is cut from the same cloth as Stephen Merchant’s agent in Extras – he thinks he can get her a part in Sex and the City but isn’t even sure if Sex and the City is still running. In another great scene a potential new monstrous manager lunches Bamford and lays bare the bullshit of showbiz with her vacuous luvvie spiel.

These are just some of the highlights of an extremely busy looney tunes of a sitcom. Breaking the fourth wall is nothing new and in places this reminded me of everything from Miranda to House of Fools and, in particular, Vic and Bob’s early sitcom try-out, The Weekenders. Lady Dynamite is truly odd and also truly wonderful. 

The full series of Lady Dynamite is on Netflix right now.