It may seem like a regular odd-couple premise, but this undersung BBC series is fresh and inventive. And that’s before you get to the musical numbers

In our new series Stream Team, Guardian Australia’s arts writers dig out their favourite hidden gems of streaming to help you while away some isolated hours.

Back at the end of 2016, I was neck deep in a masters of screenwriting, for which I was writing a family sitcom set in 14th century England. At that increasingly desperate, Pizza Shapes-gobbling stage of the 18-month writing project, I had watched every historical comedy under the sun at least seven times. Seeking respite from my questionable life choice, but wanting to maintain a vague pretence of research, I typed in the sacred runes – “BBC comedy” – and clicked search.

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The third or fourth result was a show titled Uncle; the poster featured a gormless-looking beardy guy alongside a young boy sporting George Harrison’s haircut from 1967; the bare bones logline was: “Comedy about an irresponsible 30-something musician and his neurotic 13-year-old nephew.” Intrigued, I clicked play, and thank god I did: Uncle is one of the un- (or at least, under-) sung masterworks of 21st century television.

Created and written by Oliver Refson and Lilah Vandenburgh, and directed by Refson, the show opens on a pitch-dark note: professional layabout and sometime musician Andy (Nick Helm) is about to take a bath with his toaster when the phone rings. The voice that sings out from the answering machine speaker is Andy’s sister, Sam (Daisy Haggard), who – unaware of Andy’s planned demise – needs him to look after her son, Errol (Elliot Speller-Mason), after school.

Andy grudgingly gets out of the bath, and so our unlikely pair begin their shared journey.

The premise initially appears to be another odd-couple spin: Andy is a deadbeat loser whose music career never took off, while Errol – or “Rolly” – is a hyper-intelligent oddball with OCD tendencies (to say the least) who is also, crucially, a music whiz. Indeed, that would have been a fruitful enough set-up for a reasonably diverting comedy series that might have fizzled out over time.

Uncle, instead, quickly establishes itself as a whip-smart treatise on the notion of chosen family, one that is formally inventive (each episode features a musical number), with ensuing seasons that are structurally playful too. (Not for nothing do I show my screenwriting students the third season episode “2:27” as a perfect example of nonlinear storytelling).

It’s full of actors you’ve definitely seen elsewhere – lots of “hey, it’s that guy!” or “oh I love her” moments – including the magnificent Haggard, most recently seen in Back To Life, and Con O’Neill, lately of Chernobyl, as the gender-fluid Val (Andy’s ex-girlfriend’s father). Every character is struggling with some sort of trauma – even the affable Bruce (the delightful comic Daniel Lawrence Taylor) – and being with them as they stumble through it towards self-actualisation and love is cathartic.

Andy is the sort of character the phrase “you’ll love to hate him” was made for, yet Helm manages to find the tiny spark of bruised humanity in even his most selfish moments; watching him inch towards something approaching generosity and functioning adulthood is tense but rewarding. (Rolly, on the other hand, was essentially like watching myself: a white-knuckle hell ride through my youth as an undiagnosed autistic person with a keen interest in unpopular media that made me, essentially, anathema to my peers.)

For everyone who didn’t close the tab at the mere mention of the phrase “each episode features a musical number”, the songs are key to the show’s subversive genius. It helps that Helm was a musician already known for his brash standup comedy, and Speller-Mason has grown up to become an eccentric singer-songwriter-cum-performance artist (a rich English tradition).

Take season two’s “7 Minutes In Heaven”, in which uptight Rolly grapples with his crush by singing, “I helped you with homework for terms and terms/I wanted to kiss you, to hell with the germs!”

It’s true, there are probably breezier comedies to watch right now (though to be clear, it is absolutely hilarious), but staring down the prospect of self-isolation and everything that goes along with it, I immediately thought of the last really tough time in my life: the month I discovered Uncle. Compared to the current moment at least, that time wasn’t very tough at all – but hunkering down on the couch feels a little less bleak with Andy and Rolly to see me through.

• Uncle is streaming now on Stan