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Starting next week on E4, the American smash hit series Glee brings more than cheery pop songs to our television screens.

Glee follows an optimistic high school teacher as he attempts to inspire a show choir (the glee club) of misfits and losers to realise their star potential and restore the glee club to its former glory; opposed by the high school hierarchy, the principle and the ruthless, borderline-psychotic cheerleading coach (fantastically portrayed by Jane Lynch of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Role Models).

At first glance Glee bears a striking similarity to Disney’s world conquering High School Musical series. However, closer inspection reveals that Glee is in fact a welcome antithesis to a recent crop of films from the states aimed at young people of all ages.

Whereas Disney creations like Camp Rock and more recently, the Twilight series, preach a strict moral conservative viewpoint regarding abstinence and conformation to hetero-normality (Twilight author Stephenie Meyer is a committed Mormon and Camp Rock stars The Jonas Brothers are part of the evangelical, pro-abstinence purity ring campaign) Glee is perhaps the most progressive TV show since Queer as Folk.

Throughout the first season, the show runs the usual gamut of ‘high school issues’ but handles them in a unique, often hilarious and touching way. A prime example is the episode ‘Wheels’, dealing with disability rights, that demonstrates how sometimes those that try to help disabled people can be just as dehumanising as the idiots that mock them – this episode demonstrates Glee’s central message: that at heart, we’re all human and we deserve to be treated equally regardless of ability, gender, race or sexual orientation.

Another way in which Glee acts as a strike back at the schmaltzy crap pushed out of the Disney factory is its music. And yes, if you hadn’t realised by now, Glee is a musical – but unlike High School Musical the cast members don’t sing specially written ballads about how hard it is to be an exceptionally-good-looking, white, middle-class American, instead they belt out fantastic covers from a whole range of pop genres (the pilot episode, available on 4oD includes Raz favourite ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ and Amy Winehouse hit ‘Rehab’) and combine them with dance routines to tackle anything that might come out of Britain’s Got Talent. Though occasionally the characters fall into the musical trap of singing to the camera to show their feelings, this is thankfully kept to a minimum and mostly the songs are in the context of choir practices/competitions.

Let down slightly by an overreliance on one storyline in particular (you’ll notice it very quickly, it involves a love-triangle/square), Glee is the best high school drama to come out of the States since Freaks and Geeks.

Glee airs on Monday at 9pm on E4.