The animated spy series is a class act in its own right – but it also serves as a tribute to and cast reunion for Arrested Development

TV has a long-running love affair with spies. Spooks ran amok for 10 seasons, Alias for five; Simon Templar and Jason King ruled TV in previous eras. Tonight sees the return to British screens of FX's animated spy comedy Archer, less heralded than other US imports but one of the funniest shows on air. Set in international spy agency ISIS, it focuses on Sterling Archer, a brilliant field agent with crippling mommy issues that are exacerbated by his mother Malory's role as head of the agency. A class act in its own right, it also serves as both tribute to and cast reunion for Arrested Development.

Running for three seasons from 2003-2006 Arrested Development was one of the most important comedies of the past 10 years. Long-time rumours of its return seemed to be confirmed in November when Mitchell Hurwitz announced the production of new episodes, probably to broadcast in 2013, with the intention that they lead into a feature film. Although the show never got great audiences those who got hooked loved it with a passion. Following its demise it became the Velvet Underground of modern sitcom – never a commercial success but exerting a mighty influence on its successors.

On no show is that influence felt as keenly as on Archer. Jessica Walter who you'll remember as overbearing cruel matriarch Lucille Bluth reappears as overbearing cruel matriarch Malory Archer; Judy Greer who played sex-obsessed secretary Kitty Sanchez plays sex-obsessed secretary Cheryl Tunt, and Jeffrey Tambor, married to Jessica Walter in Arrested Development, plays her sometime love interest Len Trexler here.

You'll even see David Cross (Tobias Fünke) popping up in tonight's show, while the callback humour and cutaways that gave Arrested Development its distinctive feel are also generously dotted throughout Archer. (You might think characters repeatedly referencing Kenny Loggins's 1986 clinker Danger Zone would get old – you'd be quite wrong).

Nonetheless, Archer is a show with its own mind and agenda, and a powerful, hysterical lead who, while also being a cavalier meathead, is lethal in the field and rivals Buffy Summers in triumphalist punning. ("Chokely Carmichael" to a nervous colleague being a favourite). Violence, bourbon and womanising are a given in his quest to become a regressive James Bond, while his relationship with his mother makes Tony Soprano's look healthy.

The supporting cast bristles with charismatic idiots like brawling, boozing HR director Pam, head of research Dr Krieger and Archer's much-scapegoated British valet Woodhouse. To wander through the ISIS office is to risk limb in a minefield of snarky one-liners. Vocally, Archer is among the strongest animations on TV and it also looks terrific, with its hand-painted backgrounds a melding of retro-chic and future tech.

The ISIS family is a dysfunctional one in which everyone undermines, abuses and short changes their co-workers until they realise they are not going to get through the week's caper alive unless they cooperate. And while he might be a colossal narcissist, somehow you do care about Sterling Archer.

The show's weird comic mix of espionage, office politics and Oedipal crisis hangs together extraordinarily well – better than it has any right to. If you fear the new Arrested Development episodes being stuck in development hell then what you need in the interim is a PPK-packing mommy's boy more dangerous than the Bluth Cornballer TV gets no deadlier.

• Archer starts on Wednesday 14 March, 10pm on 5*