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.