Comedian Shane Gillis takes viewers to the edge of humour’s acceptability in Netflix series Tires.

Shane Gillis was fired as an SNL cast member before he even got on the air because of what were deemed offensive jokes on his podcast. So the philosophy of Tires is to go for broke.

From left, Chris O’Connor as Cal and Shane Gillis as Shane in Tires.

When comedian Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live in February, he conceded a few things right off – one, that God had moulded him to look like a “high-school football coach slash ninth-grade sex-education teacher” – and, two, that he had very little material that was suitable for network television. He proceeded to do a routine largely about Down syndrome and the people in his family who have it, and it was just tender enough to prevent the NBC censors from ­hyperventilating.

Tires would have given them a stroke. The six-episode comedy series is on Netflix – where it can be safely outrageous, and is – and represents what Gillis was talking about, or rather not talking about, during his SNL ­monologue.

The new show may, in a way, be a map to the future, or some future, of comedy. There has been much debate about political correctness and cancel culture ruining comedy – or making it better, depending on whom you listen to. Gillis himself was fired as an SNL cast member before he even got on the air because of what were deemed offensive jokes on his podcast. So the philosophy of Tires is to go for broke. Created and written by co-stars Steve Gerben and Gillis and their one-named director, McKeever, the show is predictably uneven, but when it works it’s ­hilarious.

Modelled in part on the mock-documentary style of The Office without quite the number of reaction shots, Tires takes place at the Valley Forge Automotive Center run by the overeducated and cripplingly indecisive Will (Gerben), the Hamlet of the half-price oil change.

His father owns a string of such shops, and in one of his first official acts Will has mistakenly ordered 500 tyres.

His efforts to unload them leads to marketing desperation, including a campaign to make women more comfortable bringing their cars in for service, which goes completely awry, especially since no one on hand understands what he’s trying to do, or why.

And then there is the shop’s bikini car wash, for which Shane the grease monkey (Gillis) recruits a team of “dumpster mermaids” to wield sponges and upsell customers. These efforts and more are debacles and provide opportunities for the characters to say and do their worst.

Gerben, Gillis and McKeever employ a kind of workaround in their workplace comedy.

Gillis, despite his rising star as a stand-up act, is not the centre of the story.

That space belongs to Will. Shane is far more effective slightly off-centre, provoking, feigning sincerity and making Will’s life immeasurably worse.

The other deft move is putting any offensive dialogue in the mouths of people who are basically idiots.

It’s kind of a cheat, something this viewer realised while laughing and then feeling guilty about it. Maybe.

There’s a certain amount of truth in Tires, and not just in the gag lines that pick at righteousness and indignation.

The characters – who include the clockwatching Kilah (Kilah Fox), the oddly competent mechanic Cal (Chris O’Connor), and the delusional Dave (Stavros Halkias) – represent the kind of stymied dreamers who populate large segments of suburban America and whom most audiences will recognise, if not admire, or even like.

They’re meant as conduits for the writers’ twisted sensibilities, but they’re also real – and so are their reductive views of their customers, their sexual preoccupations and their harebrained ideas about marketing and promotion.

The unexpected nature of the jokes is a prime reason the show works, but so are the little truths revealed along the way.

Surprise and honesty, after all, are the steel-belted radials of comedy.

Tires is streaming on Netflix.