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If killing off Keeley Hawes halfway through a series wasn’t enough to tell you that there’s little the BBC considers sacrosanct anymore, then just look at Upstart Crow, a near-blasphemous Shakespeare sitcom which has somehow become one of the institution’s funniest comedies in years. This probably says more about the state of situational comedy than it does about the show itself, as Upstart Crow isn’t exactly Friends funny or even Miranda funny. It’s a fiendishly irreverent effort, however, replacing romantic stereotypes of the bard with tongue-in-cheek melodrama.

Written by Ben Elton (best known as the writer of Blackadder), Upstart Crow purports to tell of an up-and-coming Shakespeare (David Mitchell): a middle-class actor-turned-playwright who stitches together new work while arguing with his family, falling foul of London society, and occasionally getting caught up in ludicrous plots. Gone is Joseph Fiennes’ passionate, love-struck creative; this Will is much more akin to the blundering Shakespeare of Horrible Histories’ criminally underrated Bill. Every aspect of his life is up for pillorying, from Elizabethan fashion and that iconically unflattering hairline to his shotgun wedding at eighteen to Anne Hathaway (Liza Tarbuck), a woman eight years his senior.

Unexpectedly, Upstart Crow is funniest when pulling humour from, of all things, Shakespearean scholarship. Of course, the whole thing is a bit of a David Mitchell vehicle, scattered with some awful David Brent impressions as well as unsubtle delivery aplenty. But in order to parody something successfully, you need to know your source material, and this is a show that knows its stuff. It calls out the weird age differences, pokes fun at the obsessive sonnets and rolls its eyes at the ridiculous plots so common in Shakespeare’s work. It acknowledges that men initially played Shakespeare’s women (“As an actor who plays female roles, I would like to accept this award on behalf of all actors who play female roles. Their courage, their strength, their passion…”). There are running gags about the commute from Stratford to London and pointed remarks about class and corruption. Will’s exasperated “Woe to Albion! This sceptred isle doth burst with talent, and yet a gaggle of snootish pamper-loins from just two universities snaffle all the influence, jobs and cash!” is played with not even the slightest hint of humility from Mitchell, a man so thoroughly acquainted with Oxbridge that he was president of the Cambridge Footlights (the University of Cambridge’s legendary theatrical club, whose alumni include everyone from Stephen Fry to Sue Perkins to Salman Rushdie).

Elsewhere, Gemma Whelan (better known as gutsy Yara Greyjoy on Game of Thrones) returns to her comedy roots as spirited Kate, an aspiring actress determined to get around the laws banning women from taking to the stage. Playwright and spy-about-town Christopher Marlowe (Tim Downie) is a fixture of Will’s London life, regularly swinging by in a haze of terrifically played insufferable bravura. Busy as he is with life of rapscallionry, he hardly has time to write his plays, which are instead helpfully supplied by Shakespeare. The historical Marlowe’s death in a tavern brawl is cheekily avoided as Kit spends much of the most recent season having faked his own demise.

With three short seasons already in the bag, there’s still time to enter stage right with this costume comedy.