Friday sees the welcome return of BAFTA award winning comedy series Green Wing on Channel 4. Set in possibly the most dysfunctional hospital ever to grace the screens of British television. You won’t find doctors and nurses gathered round patients shouting phrases like “he’s bradycardic” (what does that mean?) or for the matter the usual clutch of white coats and pensive stares as a patient hovers between life and death.

What you will find however are surgeons playing pat a cake over an open patient. A human resources manager with the sexual appetite of a small village as well as a stammering deviant radiologist. That’s before we even take into account the manically obsessive staff liaison officer and a whole host of other neurotic doctors who in reality would have no place in a hospital.

Yep, its time to return to East Hampton for another round of Green Wing’s twisted humour. Of course hospitals and comedy are by no means strange bedfellows, but Green Wing foregoes the cheeky slap and tickle postcard humour this setting usually attracts. The show regularly starts out on an odd footing and rapidly spins off into deeper branches of comic surrealism. If the first series is anything to go by you often find yourself reeling under the constant weight of the non-stop gags.

The show blends vague elements of soap opera, with storylines threading through consecutive episodes as well as courting elements of sketch comedy with self-contained pieces popping up all over the place. Mix into this an unusual jump cut, fast-forward filming style and it only serves to accentuate the lunacy that goes on within the confines of the show.

What makes the show even more eminently watchable is the ensemble cast (who are all returning for the second series). Green Wing reads like a who’s who of British comedy. Maybe all the names don’t all trip off the tongue but the faces are undoubtedly familiar and all come from a good pedigree. The likes of Tamsin Greig (Black Books, People Like Us), Mark Heap (Brass Eye, Spaced), Michelle Gomez (The Book Group, Carrie & Barry) and Sarah Alexander (Coupling, Smack The Pony) all head up the show and as for the rest, well you’ll soon find yourself saying “wasn’t he/she in…”. If you enjoyed the first series then you already know this is an unmissable prospect.

The new series of Green Wing starts Friday 9:30pm on Channel 4

(…oh and apparently bradycardic means a slow heart rate.)