I’m going to tell you two things that are unequivocally true. First, Silicon Valley is the best comedy on television at the moment. Second, not nearly enough people are talking about it.

I’ve spent the last couple of months watching the internet froth itself dry over a succession of lesser comedies – your Kimmy Schmidts, your Car Shares, your Masters of None – while Silicon Valley has quietly scaled ever more peerlessly majestic heights. And now I’m here to say stop. Enough is enough. Silicon Valley is astonishing. The fact that you’re not watching it is ridiculous.

If you’re new to it, Silicon Valley is a sitcom about a tech startup called Pied Piper. Its CEO is Richard Hendricks, a prodigiously gifted coder whose desire to always play fair puts him directly in the sights of all the sharks and wolves and venture capitalist nimrods the technology world has to offer. Their product is potentially world-changing, but time and again they keep running afoul of Google analogue Hooli and, worse, their own tendency to self-sabotage.

In essence, Silicon Valley is the show that The Big Bang Theory should be. That’s a broad, dumb comedy about geeks that isn’t geeky in the slightest. It’s for people who call themselves geeks because they own an Xbox and once Instagrammed a photo of themselves wearing a Geek T-shirt. The Big Bang Theory is the geek version of the Black and White Minstrels.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Silicon Valley is the show that The Big Bang Theory should be. That just professes to be geeky – this walks the walk. Photograph: HBO

Silicon Valley walks the walk. Its most lauded joke – a masterpiece of sustained execution – involved an epiphany about data compression that came from a calculation about how to masturbate an entire auditorium of men to climax most efficiently. The latest series has a running joke about a grisly job that simply didn’t exist a decade ago: moderating all the unwanted penis pictures out of social media.

Uniquely among its peers, the show mixes highbrow insider jargon with out-and-out filth. But, more than that, Silicon Valley also functions as a surprisingly tight drama. It’s every man for himself in this world, and each of Pied Piper’s moves is inevitably countered and parried by forces greater than them. The frustration they feel at every turn is palpable. At times, watching them try to crawl out from under the thumb of a tech giant can be outright gripping. If it weren’t for all the gags about horse sex, you’d be thinking of Silicon Valley in the same way you thought about Breaking Bad.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Silicon Valley’s hidden treasure status will come as no surprise to its creator Mike Judge. He’s the king of them. Photograph: HBO

The cast, too, is exceptional, comprising some of the most gifted comedians and improvisers around. Thomas Middleditch is much more splenetic in the flesh, but he brings a nervy intensity to Hendricks. Zach Woods’ Jared is one of the most quietly startling characters in television today. TJ Miller is in it, at least until the end of this series. If you want an idea of the cast’s chemistry, listen to one of their Comedy Bang Bang episodes, which tend to pile on layers of stupidity until the whole thing collapses.

Of course, Silicon Valley’s hidden treasure status will come as no surprise to its creator Mike Judge. He’s long been the master of them. Always slightly ahead of his time, Judge’s reputation as a man who makes unappreciated gems is beginning to ossify into legend. Office Space took five years to become a classic. Idiocracy took a decade to come true. At this rate, you’ll be tottering around in comfortable slacks by the time everyone sees Silicon Valley for the masterpiece it is.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Laurie Bream, one of Silicon Valley’s minor yet extravagantly wealthy antagonists. Photograph: HBO

I will admit that part of my desperation for you to accept Silicon Valley into your life is anecdotal. I recently did business with a person with the exact mannerisms of Laurie Bream, one of Silicon Valley’s minor yet extravagantly wealthy antagonists. Modelled on Enemy of Journalism Peter Thiel, Bream is oblique and impossible to connect with on any form of human level. “They’re just like Laurie Bream!” I’d tell people. Then, when I saw their blank faces, I’d go on. “You know, from Silicon Valley!” I’d say. More blank faces. So, look, if you don’t start watching it for the laughs, or the cast, or the sheer pound-for-pound quality of the thing, do it for me. It really narks me off when people don’t get my references.

Silicon Valley airs in the US on HBO on Sunday nights, and in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday nights.