Paul Abbott

Shameless creator attacks predictable TV drama casting

Shameless creator Paul Abbott has criticised broadcasters for regularly casting the same actors in UK dramas, claiming shows have become "predictable" as a result and that audiences want to see new talent.

Shameless transfers to USA with William H. Macy

Paul Abbott's Shameless is being turned into a new series for a US audience with William H. Macy playing a Chicago-based version of David Threlfall's perpetually sozzled patriarch Frank Gallagher.

Quality has been variable since creator Paul Abbott ran out of time to write the hyper-real saga of life on the chavvy Chatsworth, but Ed McCardie's opener to series six was a triumph, weaving together four plots and throwing in some surrealism, too.

Whichever preview you read for the new series of Shameless, it will say that the first episode marks a return to form the stalwart series. I once read a review of it somewhere in a posh newspaper that said that they couldn't bare watching something about working class people living on a council estate in Manchester. It made her feel grubby. If that's not a reason to like Shameless I don't what is, but let's face it - series five wasn't all that great, and even its creator, the heavily bum-licked Paul Abbott, agreed. So it's good that all the signs say that series is a return to form.

Shameless is back. The days when it was a semi-autobiographical family saga written by Paul Abbott are long gone, and for years now it has been jumping sharks on a regular basis. Despite that, it still has a raucous energy and an irreverent, devil-may-care humour, and David Threlfall's performance as Frank Gallagher is up there among the finest comic performances to be found anywhere on television in the past ten years.

HBO cues up US version of Shameless

US cable network HBO is to develop an American version of Channel 4 drama Shameless after striking a deal with John Wells, the writer and producer behind ER and The West Wing. Wells, who also executive produced Oscar-nominated movie Far From Heaven, is currently writing a Stateside version of the Bafta-winning drama series. The development deal follows years of negotiations over a US version by Shameless's creator Paul Abbott, with NBC previously linked to the project. The UK version has aired on BBC America and the Sundance Channel in the US.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe took time off from spewing cheery vitriol across the television schedules to interview writers about the craft of writing.

These were clearly writers that Brooker admired, so his interview technique was disconcertingly sympathetic. The end result was a masterclass from such luminaries as Russell T Davies, Paul Abbott, Tony Jordan and Graham Linehan. All of whom spoke wittily and winningly about the combination of prevarication, panic and perspiration that produces a television script.

Ironically, the most pertinent point of a fascinating 50 minutes was made by a writer who wasn't even present. Abbott quoted Jimmy McGovern on the ever prickly problem of presenting exposition in dialogue: 'I would rather be confused for ten minutes than bored for five seconds.'

One day someone will make a television programme in which people from the south of England, particularly Londoners, are not emotionally frigid workaholics, and people from the north are not loveably daft pleasure-seekers with warm, beating hearts of gold. Shameless (Channel 4) is not that programme - it is, however, many other things. I couldn't help feeling, as I watched the repulsive Frank Gallagher (David Threlfall) head-butting his son and drinking himself into a stinking stupor that I was being encouraged in some way to forgive him. The fact that, despite my best efforts, I couldn't entirely hate him says much for the sterling quality of Paul Abbott's writing, and the amazing performance of every single cast member.

Shameless is, for all sorts of reasons, the drama about which everyone is talking at the moment. It addresses just about all TV's current obsessions: parenting, sexuality, substance abuse, social ills, the Blair government - the only thing missing so far is cosmetic surgery, but that may yet come. It is full of gallows humour and funny one-liners. It features acres of firm young flesh of both sexes, and last night it gave us a rare TV sighting of a milkman with a full erection. Like Footballers' Wives or Queer As Folk, it's got something to say and it knows how to say it. And it really couldn't have come at a better time for Channel 4.