Missed My Name Is Earl? Time to atone

My Name Is Earl is back. No, they're not making any new episodes – although one never knows with US TV – but Earl is getting repeated, daily on E4 from tonight, which is good news for the many fans of the show and even better news for those who somehow eluded its charms over its 96-episode run.

When Earl first hit in 2005, it hit big. Impressive ratings in the States earned it a decent, prominent slot in the schedules here – unlike, say, the massively underrated and still brilliant King Of The Hill. The story of a man with a huge list of misdeeds to atone for, Earl hit its stride almost immediately. The karma-fuelled plotlines twisted and turned while exploring the locale of Camden County and its colourful denizens. This wasn't some anything-goes HBO show: made by Fox, Earl was a mainstream show for NBC and had to be smart to get away with as much redneck humour and edginess as it did. And for a show with such an apparently limited premise, it had fun experimenting with its format: take the episode where the characters all hole up in the local megamart to escape the millennium bug, or Earl's 12-episode stretch in prison.

Plenty of classic instalments spring to mind: Earl's brother Randy's pretending to be a cat-lover to win the heart of guest star Amy Sedaris; either of the "Cops" episodes; the Creative Writing show, in which everyone's dreams were exposed; or Sweet Johnny, in which Earl tries some Groundhog Day-esque schtick on an amnesiac stuntman.

The show struck gold in its star Jason Lee, who has an abundance of charm and the comedy chops to sell such an "iffy" character. Professing no interest in TV, Lee is all kinds of cool. A former superstar skateboarder, he's appeared in a Sonic Youth video, had his own ultra-hip skater's brand and was memorable as the permanently pissed-off guitarist in Almost Famous and, in Chasing Amy, Dogma, Mallrats and Clerks II, is one of the few actors who can make Kevin Smith's dialogue sound like something someone said rather than something someone wrote.

He's given great support from the rest of the cast, in particular Ethan Suplee as his dimwit brother and a storming Emmy-winning performance from ex-model Jaime Pressly as Earl's hair-trigger-tempered, trailer-trash ex-wife Joy, who nails every line with a precision perhaps only equalled by Julia Dreyfuss's Elaine on Seinfeld.

The show wasn't going to win any awards for PC handling of stereotypes: Catalina is an immigrant with a green-card marriage and works as either a maid or a stripper. But it embraces such stereotypes, treating them in a good-natured, humorous way and usually letting the "victims" get the last laugh – Catalina's insults in Spanish directed at Joy often contain messages to the show's followers.

The show was also loyal to its supporting cast: many of the inhabitants of the local bar, the landlocked Crab Shack, such as the Dayhooker, the one-time Baywatch extra and the one-eyed mailman, all kept coming back.

You can also tell a lot about a show by the guests it attracts. With Earl, in which every character big or small has their faults flaunted, it's especially good to see big names putting their vanity aside. Over the four seasons Earl has featured some knockout turns from Juliette Lewis as a bounty hunter, Christian Slater as a hippie stoner, a hilarious Craig T Nelson as a prison warden, Roseanne Barr as a trailer-park manager and Erik Estrada as Erik Estrada. Burt Reynolds, the inspiration for Earl's 'tache and muscle car machismo, cropped up as the father of another recurring character played by the great SNL alum Norm MacDonald (who was known for his great Reynolds impersonations). Add to that Adam Goldberg, Danny Glover, John Waters, David Arquette, John Leguizamo and Seth Green and that's a fine list of self-deprecators.

Even though the show veered off course in the final season and the tone went askew, it wasn't anything like the massive betrayal Roseanne performed before sloping off into the syndicated night and it didn't turn weirdly bitter like Everybody Loves Raymond. My Name Is Earl was an oddly good-natured show about thieves, hookers, bullies, depressives, idiots, thugs and losers and it made them all, if not always lovable, then at least funny. It didn't rewrite the book as far as TV comedy went but it delivered plenty that was unusual and inventive for mainstream, network programming. Surely it generated enough good karma for you to give it a shot?