Nik (brilliantly played by British actor Rudi Dharmalingam) is the star nurse in Ward C at Wakefield. Beloved by colleagues and clients alike, Nik is naturally empathetic, passionate, and hands-on: a paragon of modern mental healthcare. But as Nik vies for a promotion in order to unseat Linda (Mandy McElhinney), struggles with his feelings for head doctor and ex-fiancée Kareena (Geraldine Hakewill), helps his lonely father (Shapoor Batliwalla) get back into the dating game, rebuffs his mother’s (Nadie Kammallaweera) fanatical Christianity, prepares for his sister’s (Monica Kumar) wedding, and corrals the eccentric inhabitants of Wakefield, he might just be losing his mind. It begins with a simple earworm, a song stuck in his head: ‘Come On Eileen’ by Dexys Midnight Runners (we’ve all been there). Then, images. Hallucinations. Or are they flashbacks? Snippets of childhood memories that don’t quite add up, hinting at some buried trauma. Nik’s deterioration becomes the show’s main through-line; inevitably, we will see him being pacified by his own patients. Maybe one incessant 1980s chart-topper is all that separates the lanyards from the straitjackets.

Created and penned by Kristen Dunphy, with writing from Sam Meikle, Joan Sauers, and Cathy Strickland, and wonderfully directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and Kim Mordaunt, Wakefield bites off a lot – stylistically, thematically, and dramatically – and manages to chew almost all of it. Functioning as melodrama, social realism, and Lynchian dreamscape, it constructs its eight episodes as a series of overlapping vignettes, revisiting certain events from different perspectives, a neat trick that makes each encounter even richer the second or third time around. It expresses its characters’ mental states in unique and often bewitching ways: huge images projected on a retaining wall as a young woman flees through a Gothic courtyard; a naked man reclining on a single bed in a forest of blackened trees, surrendering his flesh to the wood and ash. Bizarre but brilliantly choreographed dance sequences – a coping mechanism for Nik – burst with light and energy. In fact, the entire series is gorgeously vivid. Cinematographer Martin McGrath wrings every last drop of colour from the picturesque surrounds of Wakefield, thankfully eschewing the default modern-day mystery-thriller palette of grey, blue, and more grey.

Rudi Dharmalingam as Nik in Wakefield (ABC TV)

Central to both style and plot is Moorhouse and Mordaunt’s handling of Nik’s intensifying flashbacks. Less creatively assured television tends to wield flashbacks as a blunt instrument, assuming that the more frequent and jarring they are, the more impactful they will be (see HBO’s woeful The Undoing). In Wakefield they are a scalpel, sudden and all the more frightening for it, expertly integrated through Gabriel Dowrick and Nicholas Holmes’ top-notch editing. Then there is the all-important earworm. ‘Come On Eileen’ is stuck in Nik’s head for the entire series. He begins to hear it everywhere: a song at a wedding, on the radio in a change room, as a tune plucked on a patient’s guitar. The sound design finds endlessly creative and nefarious ways to weave ‘Come On Eileen’ into the aural fabric of the show; it may be the most sophisticated representation of underlying trauma in this or any other show like it.

Stories about mental illness require a special synergy between writer, director, and performer, and Wakefield achieves this across the board. There is not a single crude or lacklustre turn from any member of the enormous and embarrassingly talented cast. Dan Wyllie plays Steve, the burnt-out businessman trying to close a real estate deal in London from Wakefield’s broom closet. Harry Greenwood is Trevor, the ward’s class clown, wonderfully funny and tragic in equal measure. Bessie Holland is great as Tessa, a milliner and hoarder with a fiery left hook. And Harriet Dyer and Ryan Corr are especially good as couple Genevieve and Raff, fighting to retain the memories of their relationship after Gen’s disturbing schizophrenic relapse. Then there’s Wayne Blair, Colin Friels, Kim Gyngell, Matt Nable … the list goes on. If it wasn’t clear that we were meant to laugh from time to time, Wakefield also casts notable comedians Felicity Ward and Sam Simmons as Nik’s nursing offsiders. The cast is so good and each of their stories so beautifully observed it almost makes you wish the writers had given us a full, unbroken hour with each of them, rather than sprinkling their scenes across the full run of episodes.

Wakefield’s structure is one of its most notable innovations, but also its biggest stumbling block. Torn between a traditional ‘case of the week’ set-up and a more long-form puzzle-box mystery, it does occasional disservice to both, particularly in the middle stretch of episodes when the deluge of cryptic clues about Nik’s past hits saturation point. Tap shoes, puzzle pieces, bathtubs, butterflies – we’re drip-fed these beautiful but vague sensory memories and asked to simply file them away for later. Nik is both victim and detective in his own mystery – here, Dharmalingam doesn’t miss a beat – but for a few hours his storyline feels inaccessible, and not necessarily any more compelling than Wakefield’s other characters’ – just eight times longer.

When that eighth episode arrives, though, all is forgiven. Wakefield’s finale delivers on its many, many promises, in a near-perfect hour of solid and heartfelt payoff. It focuses all of Wakefield’s stylistic experimentation, twisting narrative devices, and dense symbolism into a cunning and unabashedly emotional climax. If the middle stretch of this entrancing and unusual show begins to frustrate you, don’t dismay. Stick it out. There’s method to its madness.

Wakefield is available on ABC Television and iview.