Frank Gallagher (David Threlfall) and the rest of the crew from his working-class Manchester estate return for an eighth series of Channel 4's increasingly tired-looking drama Shameless tonight, with an opening plotline in which a raucous stag do somehow leads to a psychedelic alien abduction (don't ask). Four episodes follow on consecutive nights this week, before the series settles back into its regular Tuesday night slot next week.

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.

Series seven of the award-winning drama from the sink estates of Manchester continues. At the Gallagher house, Liam (Johnny Bennett) is suffocating beneath the burden of household debts and the fallout from trying to gamble his way out of trouble - and is regarded as a major disappointment by Frank (David Threlfall). Shameless has always been a risky blend of the comic with the dark, and tonight's episode is no exception: debt, post-natal depression and child abuse are leavened with violent farce.

An almost Frank-free zone this week, presumably because actor David Threlfall was too busy directing the episode to be in it. Instead the focus is on Paddy (Sean Gilder) and his personal credit crunch. Struggling to pay his share of the christening costs (an event that will only go ahead if Karen remembers where she's left baby Connor), he comes up with a plan for the family business. Unfortunately, the rest of the family aren't keen. But there's one thing everyone on the Chatsworth Estate is keen on - and that's sex. Preferably wild, abandoned sex involving a trapeze, a nurse's uniform, adult toys and an audience. It's not called Shameless for nothing.

No ending in sight for Shameless

David Threlfall has said that he doesn't see Shameless ending any time soon.

Lock your doors and hide your fivers. The seventh series of Channel 4's popular comedy drama series about life on the fictional Chatsworth Estate in Manchester sees the return of Broken Britain's irrepressible, straggly-haired poster boy - the effing, blinding, boozing, stealing, philandering and yet strangely huggable scourge of society, Frank Gallagher (David Threlfall). Or, in the words of his long-suffering son Liam (Johnny Bennett), a "job-shy, sponging waste of space". It's not hard to understand the success of this ribald, foul-mouthed series. In an admirable tradition that Channel 4 has appeared to make all its own, Shameless glories in the graphic social meltdown of its down-at-heel characters. This first episode alone features a burst colostomy bag, a breezily shocking murder, and the delivery of a baby on the carpet of the pub's floor. Celebrating his 50th birthday, Frank has reached the pinnacle of his professional life - community service as a lollipop man. As he helps children to cross the road with his high-visibility jacket and a fag in his mouth, Frank meets an alluring, Byron-quoting librarian, Libby Croker (Pauline McLynn), and thinks he's fallen in love. "For all I know you're a charlatan," she protests. "Heaven forfend," grins Frank. And yet, even with the writing still sparkling, the drama often staggers about like its brandy-swigging protagonist. One minute it's as gritty as The Street, the next it's as pedestrian as Hollyoaks. But are we glad to have Frank back? Absolutely.

This is the seventh series of Shameless and an eighth is already in the works. Sadly, it is not a cause for celebration. The only way to enjoy it nowadays is to stay focused on David Threlfall's performance and try not to remember how good the first series was all those years ago. Tonight, on the eve of his 50th birthday, Threlfall's character Frank Gallagher has met the new love of his life. She's a librarian who lights a flame in his soul, don't you know, and makes him feel as though he would like to become someone other than the job-shy, sponging waste of space that everyone knows him to be. She, for her part, is a Byron-spouting narcoleptic in search of adrenalin and excitement, who wants to wake up not knowing what the day has to offer. Like a soap opera straining after flamboyance, not a word of it rings true.

Nothing's really changed on the Chatsworth Estate as the seventh series begins. Glasgow kisses are two-a-penny, as are drunkenness, rampant sex and four-letter words that would make Gordon Ramsay blush. But this time there's also a birth (on the pub floor) and a homicide (over what looks like a plate of pie and chips). It's Frank's (David Threlfall) 50th birthday but, most unlike him, he doesn't join the party organised for him down the Jockey, preferring to neck whisky in his bedroom and brood about his life. It doesn't stay loveless for long, though. While he's doing his community service as a lollipop man, Libby the librarian (Father Ted's Pauline McLynn) literally falls into his arms. Unfortunately, Libby has a passion for romantic literature and tends to drone on "Byronically", while Frank's mind is focused on much earthier topics. But no one's perfect, and certainly not on the Chatsworth Estate.

Shameless, Channel 4, review

Benji Wilson reviews Shameless, the return of the northern estate comedy-drama series starring David Threlfall.

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