From 1955, the sitcom Citizen Kane. Don’t take my word for it. When Ricky Gervais interviewed Larry David and asked about his comedy heroes, David came up with exactly one name: “When I was growing up, I loved the Sgt Bilko show. He was doing what we’re doing: these guys who were saying and doing what nobody else would, being unlikeable…”

It’s all down to Phil Silvers, of course. A streetwise, gambling-addicted ex-burlesque huckster, he just burns through the show, which genius comedy writer Nat Hiken created specifically for him. Silvers’s Bilko is an eternal hustler trapped in the army, in charge of the greasy, lazy losers of the Motor Pool at Fort Baxter. Every episode is, essentially, the same episode (a technique David replicates in Curb Your Enthusiasm): Bilko cooks up a scheme to make money by fleecing everyone else blind. And then he winds up broke, beaten by himself.

In between come more gags than you’d think possible. Fast and funny are all that matter here. No schmaltz. Silvers, a master of double-talk and double-take is the conductor, but the sadsack ensemble cast around him, jumbling up Jewish, WASP, Italian, Irish, white and black faces (sweet, sharp, subversive stuff for network TV in the 1950s USA) is a joy. He’s Duke Ellington. They’re his orchestra. They swing.

Its influence can still be seen all over. Dad’s Army lifted the platoon-based comedy. Only Fools and Horses blatantly aped the self-defeating, secretly gold-hearted con-man. In the States, Bilko’s platoon echoes from Cheers gang to the un-American slackery Homer Simpson brings to his nuclear plant duties. Loving this show has little to do with any 1950s nostalgia. It’s saturated in its era, yet retains a joyous, lethally sharp contemporary snap. It’s what they’re talking about when they talk about “TV’s Golden Age.”