When you’re talking about 2016 comedy, you’re inevitably talking about an embarrassment of riches. As a whole, this year’s television has been in top form, and in no genre is that most true than in our comedies. Whether you’re looking for absurdist hard comedies about clowning (Baskets) or zany reflections on mental illness (Lady Dynamite), there’s a new series out there to fit every comedic sensibility. That’s why what I’m about to say means a lot to me. FX’s Atlanta is the best comedy of this year.

Created by and starring Donald Glover, Atlanta follows two cousins working through the Atlanta music scene in order to better their families and their lives. The series mostly follows Alfred Miles’ aka “Paper Boi” (Brian Tyree Henry) rise through the hip-hop world following the release of his much-discussed track, “Paper Boi.” Donald Glover stars as Earn Marks, Paper Boi’s Princeton-dropout-cousin-turned-manager. From the show’s cast of characters to its industry and environment, Atlanta exists in a realm that very few shows have touched. However, it’s not Atlanta’s differences that make the comedy great. It’s the show’s confidence.

Much like all of Glover’s work, Atlanta is confidently and unabashedly itself, whether you love it or hate it. This is not a show that will ever resort to cheap audience hand holding. Either you’re willing accept the oddities of Glover and director Hiro Murai’s gorgeously intricate if not eccentric universe, or you will be left behind. This is a series that felt confident enough to separate its newly-developed main characters from one another in the show’s second episode, a move most series wouldn’t even consider until around season finale time. Likewise Atlanta does not care if you’re confused by an episode ending with a stranger in a Batman mask knocking on our lead character’s door. Its characters have too much at stake to slow down just like Atlanta itself has too much at stake to resort to pandering explanations. Seeing this level of confidence in Atlanta’s characters, plot, and storytelling tactics isn’t merely refreshing. In its originality ,the series is indicative of everything that makes modern television great.

In her review of the series, The New Yorker‘s Emily Nussbaum perfectly captured what it is about Atlanta’s slow specificity that makes the show so remarkable. “In Atlanta, however, Glover is less concerned with pure joke density; instead, he emphasizes character and mood, place and flow, a different type of originality,” Nussbaum writes. “If “Atlanta” were just about Earn, with his anime-pretty features and his boyish inability to commit, it might get static. Instead, deeper themes keep welling up, especially the conundrum of a society that fetishizes ghetto cool but marginalizes the men who embody it.”

The Atlantic‘s Vann R. Newkirk II praised the series for its almost magical look into Atlanta’s currently evolving hip-hop scene, comparing this origin story with Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down. “The magic of Atlanta so far is also alchemy; only this time the substance being transmuted is hip-hop itself. It’s no secret that the past two decades of hip-hop history have seen the balance of power shift south from New York City,” he explains. “The presence of that renaissance overwhelms today on the radio, just as it makes its mark on Glover’s characters.”

We’re in an age of television that is unafraid to break traditional television formats and take risks, and as this year’s Emmys proved time and time again, those risks are paying off. The big winners of the 2016 Emmys were a dense, high-budget fantasy show, an anthology series about O.J. Simpson, and a highly emotional comedy about a family patriarch’s transition into a new gender identity. At this stage, referring to Game of Thrones or even Transparent as risky shows seems naive, but there was a time in TV’s not-so-distant past when that’s exactly what these series were. With its premise, Atlanta follows the rule of risky TV, but it’s the show’s highly focused narrative, smartly subversive moments of brilliance, and heartfelt character development that gives the freshman series the confidence to be as emboldened as its more developed television peers.

That boldness is also communicated through the series’ actors. Brian Tyree Henry adds in a level of vulnerability and confusion to his fame-based overconfidence that helps you to immediately relate to him. Of course he’s happy that “Paperboy” is blowing up, but he can’t exactly understand why either. Likewise, Zazie Beetz adds in a level of begrudging level-headedness as Van, the mother of Earn’s child. Van is a complicated character, someone who is forced to give up her dreams for her daughter’s happiness, and her relationship with Earn is equally complex. The characters of Atlanta are several things — detailed, impulsive, often desperate — but more than anything else, they feel believable. Atlanta brings to the screen a better scripted version of a recognizable real life, something that is struggling and messy while simultaneously being ridiculous and beautiful.

Atlanta premieres tonight on FX. You can watch new episodes of Atlanta Tuesdays on FX at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.

[Where to watch Atlanta]