SFreya (Kyla Harris), a thirty-something artist who uses a wheelchair, sits on the toilet, frowning and having bowel problems. Jo (Elena Saurel), Freya’s estranged best friend and new personal assistant, puts on a blue glove, lubricates her finger and offers to help. Within seconds, she is bent over, trying to hold back a flow of bile. “Are you gagging?” Freya asks, ashamed. “This is so humiliating!” Jo bends over apologetically and bravely pulls down her pants. “Put your finger in my ass!” she screams. “For the sake of equality!”

I don’t know if this is the first time anal stimulation for constipation has been reported on British TV, but I suspect no one has kept a record of it. The fact that it’s a scene from the BBC’s latest disability comedy, rather than a particularly hard-hitting episode of Casualty, makes it what a press release might call “groundbreaking”. I’d call it very funny.

We might regret it This is the brainchild of Harris and Lee Getty – real-life friends who worked together on and off as a nurse and PA for over a decade. Inspired by their experiences but with a heavy dose of fiction, the series sees Harris’ Freya move from her native Canada to London to live with her long-distance partner Abe (Darren Boyd), a stuffy insolvency lawyer “in the midst of a midlife crisis, albeit a very inclusive one.”

When Freya is left without care and living on sofas, Jo moves in with the couple without a home or a job and becomes Freya’s 24/7 PA – and Abe’s 24/7 nerve wreck. The premise is simple but novel: what if you hired your best friend to help you wash, change and go out? Or, as Jo puts it, “What happens when the person you love starts paying you to stay with them?”

Harris and Saurel’s partnership is marked by an effortless intimacy that is a joy to watch, but the series’ strength is its ensemble cast. There’s Abe’s soon-to-be ex-wife Jane (played with fantastic dryness by Sally Phillips) and his wayward son Levi (Edward Bluemel), who is busy trying to get into bed with Jo. Some of the funniest early scenes come from Freya’s outgoing PA Ty (Aasiya Shah), who plays “well-meaning but useless” with aplomb. Some of the humor comes from the fact that their relationship subverts the way we are often taught to deal with disability and care. Freya is not a helpless figure portrayed as lucky to have a carer. She is an adult in control who is increasingly annoyed by her employee (“She’s going to make me commit a crime”).

After the first episode, it feels like a completely rounded universe, with all the main characters and their various followers in place within 29 minutes. Even the supporting cast, like the two Olivias who enthusiastically scout Freya as a “diverse” model, fit in seamlessly.

While the main cast are relatively new, the show feels like a who’s who of modern British comedy thanks to a series of brilliant cameos, from Home’s Youssef Kerkour as a builder pricing out the remodels on Freya’s new house to This Time With Alan Partridge’s Tim Key as a bigoted restaurant owner who goes bust. The standout, however, is Ghosts’ Lolly Adefope, who appears in the second episode as a former soldier who now runs Jo’s mad PA training workshop. “Don’t ask me what I’ve done, don’t ask me about data,” she tells the group. “Whether you’re out there on the job or here entering data, it’s all military.”

There’s been a spate of “issued” comedies lately, from This Way Up to Feel Good. On paper, WMRT is part of that trend. But that wouldn’t do it justice. Yes, this is a groundbreaking portrayal of a disabled woman on screen, but it’s not really about disability or care. It’s about relationships – messy, complicated, interdependent. The truth at the heart of the series becomes clear: Jo needs Freya as much as Freya needs Jo.

All six episodes were available in previews, suggesting the BBC is confident about the end result. And they should be. The script is beautifully paced, giving equal space to witty one-liners and painful moments. There’s a realism to it all that feels liberating. As the chaotic Jo, Saurel brings an irreverence mixed with a vulnerability that makes me curious to see what she’ll do next. Harris makes Freya seem like a character we’ve never seen on screen before, whether she’s using a catheter in an alleyway because there are no accessible toilets in a venue, or being interrupted by her PA mid-sex, you wonder what took the commissioners so long.