The sold-out audience at an event to celebrate the final series of BBC Three comedy Man Like Mobeen was treated to an insight into the unusual way it is made. When Guz Khan, its star and co-writer, created Mobeen in 2017, he had not long left his job as a Coventry schoolteacher and it is perhaps because he had no experience of how to film a series that he developed the show’s improvisational and collaborative style.

Co-writer Andy Milligan explained that what ends up on screen is often very different from the first scripts: “It’s an absolute nightmare. We write the scripts and then the cast mess about with it and usually make it better, which is really annoying.

“It’s even harder for the director and producer, who have to try to make the day work when the first couple of hours is the cast sitting around saying: ‘Wouldn’t it be funnier if we changed this whole scene?’ It’s not a normal way to work, but that’s what suits the show and makes it authentic, with conversations people actually have.”

Salman Akhtar, who came from the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Saj, said: “Guz told us to bring ourselves to the show because that’s what makes it. It was a new experience for me. Sometimes on a TV show we do mad stuff but they don’t use any of it. On this, they use it all.”

Khan added: “Andy and I have never sat there and said, ‘They really should say these words like we’ve asked.’ You get to make special things when you put ego to the side. It’s an important part of the show that nobody really cares who is the funniest and who comes across best.

“It’s authentic because we are all from working-class backgrounds and everyone has lived elements of their characters. It has always been based in reality, which is why there isn’t exactly a happy ending – people do find it hard to escape this lifestyle.”

Set and filmed in inner-city Birmingham, the comedy follows Mobeen Deen, a man trying to escape life as a drug dealer. It is based on Khan’s experience of growing up on a council estate with a single mother.

Khan remembered his first day on set: “I didn’t have a clue. Someone asked if I’d got my ‘sides’ [script] and I said: ‘No I’ve just had breakfast, man, I don’t need any more.’”

Since then, Khan has appeared in everything from Taskmaster and HBO romantic comedy Our Flag Means Death to Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen and even a Walkers Crisps advert with the Spice Girls.

Khan had originally said that series four would be the last, joking that he “wanted to get out of the show like a bad marriage”. But he and Milligan – who together have won three RTS Midlands Writer awards – decided to finish with a fifth series.

They asked for the RTS event to screen the final two parts so that fans could see how Mobeen bows out. 

Although it may not be a final bow. Khan didn’t rule out the possibility of more episodes in the future, perhaps centring around the deadpan humour of Mark Silcox, who plays Uncle Shady and who got the biggest laughs at the screening.

“Mark is an icon and makes us cry with laughter,” said Khan. “One of my kids said that he wishes he was his dad! We could come back in 10 years, when Shady will have become richer than Elon Musk and we’re colonising Mars together. Whether Mobeen is gone for ever, I don’t know.”

The Man Like Mobeen screening was held on 29 April at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham. It was hosted by BBC radio presenter Summaya Mughal and produced by Jayne Rae.