Shameless

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.

Pick of the Night: Shameless - Series 4, Episode 2

No... we still don't like the Maguires. The Gallaghers' new criminal neighbours are just plain nasty, yet isn't the key to Shameless that even though its characters don't abide by the law, they are essentially good-hearted? Heigh ho. Looks like the Maguires are a permanent fixture of the new series, so let's hope for either the emergence of redeeming features or some spectacular downfall.

Pick of the Night: Shameless - Series 4, Episode 1

The Manc-council-estate comedy-drama is back, and even though we've reached series four, the show has lost none of its sweary wit.

Pete Clark on Shameless

Somehow, creator Paul Abbott has found a way to make the dysfunctional mechanisms of The Manc-council-estate comedy-drama gurgle and purr like the highly tuned engine of an Italian sports car.

Shameless is defiantly anti-authoritarian and anti-Establishment. In the old days, this country had unions that stuck up for the rights of the workers. These days, the less privileged members of society, the ones who are not strictly speaking workers in the old-fashioned sense, get together and look after themselves.

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.

None of which is to say Shameless isn't really, really good - because it is - but if you approach it expecting something akin to a council estate version of Teachers, as opposed to a work of life-altering resonance, you've less chance of walking away disappointed.