‘Dead Like Me’ is a comedy/drama revolving around death. There are many flaws with it but it has one thing really on its side: it’s funny.

I’d better declare this now: I just don’t find ‘Six Feet Under’ interesting or amusing. All that simmering undertow and wry slow mordant wit. It’s like ‘Thirtysomething’ painted in monochrome. In contrast, ‘Dead Like Me’ causes snorts of laughter.

The premise is simple, and deeply familiar to anyone who has seen ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, there’s a whole bureaucracy dedicated to what happens when people die. Georgie Bass, an 18 year old reluctantly being forced into the real world of jobs and responsibility, is killed when a toilet seat from the breaking up MIR space station smashes into her. At which point she discovers she is reaper, one of the undead who usher souls into the next dimension.

You’re thinking about ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, aren’t you? A teenage girl who finds out she is supernaturally special? The spirit world as metaphor for teenage rites of passage? The parallel isn’t helped by one of Georgie’s fellow reapers being a small time criminal with a British accent and the older, wiser male leader dispensing life lessons along with Georgie’s reaper appointments. This is slightly unfair, since ‘Dead Like Me’ shows a far greater debt to ‘My So-Called Life’, ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ and ‘As If’ (UK version). It’s narrated by Georgie, for a start, giving it that teenage diary feel. It’s also directed with that slight edge of over-exposed hyper-real colour, with fast zooms and cuts. Thankfully it draws back from the all out slapstick of ‘Scrubs’ but it certainly shares a little of its style.

Mason, the petty criminal, is disturbingly like a cross between ‘Buffy’’s Spike and Doyle from ‘Angel’ but has the distinction of being played by a genuine Brit and of having died whilst performing a self trepanation in the 60s. Rube, the older guiding mentor type, is played by Mandy Patimkin (‘The Princess Bride’) and gives the reapers in his charge their appointments on yellow post-it notes. The supporting characters include a reaper who works as a meter maid by day and Georgie’s mourning family. Her little sister Reggie has taken Georgie’s death strangely and is currently stealing toilets seats from everyone in the neighbourhood.

The reason ‘Dead Like Me’ works is because it’s thrown the money in the right places. Ellen Muth is oddly ungainly as Georgie instead of the elfin pretty faces normally seen in American teen programmes. She has the right air of faint distrust and disgust at the adult world she’s being forced into and is plausible in her teenage pouting. Patinkim is perfectly cast as Rube - his comic timing is as skilled as ever. The rest of the cast all work perfectly. Crucially, very little money has gone on the special effects with the result that there are only a couple but they are used well. There is the faint trail of light as souls are taken and the gravelings (the creatures who actually cause the deaths). What there is, more than anything, is entertaining scripts, shot through with sarcasm and swearing.

‘Dead Like Me’ is a bit of a hybrid, a bastardised child of the last decade of cult television and it’s hard not to play spot the influence with it. Yet it’s still refreshing. Where the story goes from here is hard to say - cute ideas and teenage angst can only take a show so far - but it’s the highlight of Sky One’s autumn schedule and the most disarming American show I’ve seen in years.