Shameless to end next year

Shameless is to end next year.

The comedy-drama's final 14 episodes starring David Threlfall as layabout drunk Frank Gallagher are currently filming in Manchester.

Series creator Paul Abbott said its 10th anniversary seems a fitting time to shut the book on the show.

Abbott said that dysfunctional Gallagher and his family will make one last outing on the Chatsworth Estate with a new Channel 4 series to be broadcast early next year.

Its broadcast, in 2013, will mark 10 years since the drama was first filmed in Manchester in 2003.

Writer Abbott said: “Its 10th anniversary seems a fitting time to shut the book on Shameless.

“We’ve had an absolute ball making this stuff up for a living. We’ve given back in spades and got away with absolute murder, on behalf of such a fantastically outspoken audience.

“But this is also the year my dad died and he was, in abstract, my core inspiration for starting the whole Shameless party rolling, I wanted to make invisible people vivid.

“Closing the two eras in the same year feels very right. Now I’m off to build the next whatever-it-is.”

Shameless, starring David Threlfall as Gallagher, helped launch the careers of James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff and Maxine Peake and spawned a US version of the show.

Channel 4 chief creative officer Jay Hunt said: “Shameless, ground-breaking when it launched and gob-smacking ever since, has over the years built a loyal following.

“We are in Paul Abbott’s debt for bringing his defiantly dysfunctional band of characters to Channel 4 and I’m delighted to say we have other drama projects with Paul in the pipeline.”

Shameless first aired on Channel 4 in January 2004.

The 11th and final series will take the total number of episodes to 139.