Something revolutionary is happening, literally before our eyes. The sitcom Mom is daring to deal with serious issues like substance addiction, relapsing into addiction, homelessness, poverty, rape, obesity, teen pregnancy, disability, single motherhood and a host of other social realities.
But despite these issues being brought to the forefront, it is and remains a sitcom, complete with all the trappings of the genre - cynical, funny one-liners and canned laughter, to remind you that something you might have missed is in fact extremely funny.
Wikipedia defines a sitcom as: "Short for 'situation comedy' ... a genre of comedy centred on a fixed set of characters who carry over from episode to episode."
Urban Dictionary characterises it as "what keeps everyday people from watching the news".
But not quite so with Mom: the aforementioned social problems are dealt with in a manner that can be painfully funny, but they are never treated flippantly or insensitively, or with the shallowness we have come to recognise as the true territory of sitcoms.
Mom is Christy, played by Anna Faris, a divorced mother of two - a teenage girl and a pre-teen boy - who works as a waitress in a posh restaurant. The kids' dad is a well-meaning but ineffectual pothead married to an amiable woman of means who makes every effort - and it is an effort - to accommodate her husband's damaged ex-wife and his family's tempestuous history.
Christy is a recovering alcoholic and a substance abuser of legend, still tortured by sore temptation but slowly clawing her way out of the gutter in a stuttering pursuit of the American dream.
Complicating the picture is Christy's mother, Bonnie (the imperious Allison Janney), herself a recovering addict who spent most of her childhood in foster homes and parted from Christy at some point, before they reunited years later.
WATCH | The series trailer for season 1 of Mom
Due to events beyond their control the family finds itself on the streets - homeless - before Mom lies her way into a job as the caretaker of an apartment block, part of her remuneration being a flat in the building. Tears and joy ensue.
Bonnie now lives with Christy. In their chastened circumstances they share a double bed and attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings together.
It gives the writers, Chuck Lorre, Eddie Gorodetsky and Gemma Baker, an opportunity to introduce other characters, such as Marjorie, the women's "sponsor" - which most recovering alcoholics turn to to motivate their sticking to the straight and narrow.
A regular feature of the episodes are the post-AA meeting get-togethers that six women have at a nearby eatery. There is sharing and frank talk ("I told myself I wouldn't sleep with him but before I knew it my feet were behind my ears.") A message starts to get through in these scenes: there are no men, just women, all discussing their problems, big and small, and sometimes their little victories.
Beside those already mentioned, there are other men in the story. Bonnie has a wheelchair-bound boyfriend who she met when he dialled a wrong number. Their damage is spiritual and his is physical but, like them, he seems lacking in bitterness.
However, it is far from plain sailing. In one episode Bonnie puts her back out and a doctor - cue the normal flirting - prescribes painkillers. The medication proves devastating as Bonnie's resistance falters and she slides back into addiction and substance abuse. The ensuing scenes are nothing short of harrowing as more than two decades of abstinence disappear down the toilet.
Christy gets the call that her mother is in jail. Her instinct is to jump out of bed, but she reconsiders, saying: "I'll get you in the morning." And she hangs up before lying down again in the darkness, her eyes two balls of worry.
This all happens before Christy's teen daughter falls pregnant and ultimately puts her newborn daughter up for adoption. She goes to see the baby with the adoptive parents and there are tears, but no fairy-tale resolution.
In a recent episode, Christy recognises a new face at an AA meeting. She recalls being strung out on cocaine 16 years earlier and being raped by the man who has just entered the room - as it emerges after she flees and her women friends later demand an explanation.
She blames herself for the incident but her sponsor is firm that whether she was high or not, she is not to blame. She stands up and speaks about the rape at a subsequent AA meeting, without mentioning his name, and the man leaves the room. To be continued, no doubt.
Mom is edgy and gritty and what it achieves within the generic confines of its 22-minute episodes (112 have already been made) is quite extraordinary. It shows what can be done with intelligent writers stretching themselves and good acting. Sitcoms might never be the same again.
• 'Mom' runs on Comedy Central and M-Net channels at various times...