TV review: Shameless - The Final Episode

That wasn't all she dropped, judging from the state of the pub floor. Then again, no-one ever said Shameless made good viewing for the faint-hearted. Monica's waters breaking over the floor of the snug? All in a day's work for television's most outrageous series.

When Paul Abbott's black comedy first appeared on our screens nine years ago, it was like a breath of fresh air – if such a thing ever existed on the squalid Chatsworth Estate.

Just as Charles Dickens shone a light into the seedier parts of Victorian life, Abbott's groundbreaking series opened a window into a world that few of us knew much about, but most of us suspected was there in some dark corner of urban England.

This was what politicians meant when they talked about broken society. A world where the drug dealer is seen as the pillar of the community, where job vacancies at the brothel are filled by X-Factor-style auditions. Where the patriarch of the family is forced to confront the humiliation of his wayward son going off the rails and joining the police.

Even so, it is hard not to wonder whether Abbott privately wishes he had knocked his most celebrated work on the head a couple of series ago.

Last night's swansong saw the return of several popular characters from the early days of the series. Layabout Frank's daughter Fiona, who held the family together during the early episodes, returned as if she had never been away. So did her brother Lip, who now has the dress sense and swagger of one of the more dubious characters on The Apprentice.

Not forgetting, of course, Frank's old neighbour Kev Ball, who was always something of an enigma on the Chatsworth Estate in that he not only worked for a living, but never seemed to be in any way criminally inclined.

The final episode had some good lines, no question about that. "So you're called Stella?," Kev asked Frank's youngest daughter when she was dumped on his doorstep. "And is the other one Heineken?"

Needless to say, Frank had plenty of astute observations as well. "Kev Ball, he's smarter than he looks, which admittedly is not a great feat."

And noticing his son's dubious facial hair, Frank remarked: "When I was your age, I had lots of hopes, dreams and ambitions. And not one of those involved growing a moustache."

But sharp dialogue can only go so far. The problem with last night's episode was that there was precious little by way of storyline.

Frank came out of prison, his estranged wife gave birth, returning after 'nipping out for a loaf of bread' some 10 years earlier. And that was about it. The rest of the programme involved them all moping around wallowing in self-pity, protesting about all the injustices of the world.

Truth be told, that is probably a more accurate portrayal of the real social underclass than any of the clever storylines of the early series. But it doesn't make for great television, and ill befit a series which had brought so much wit to our screens over the years.

At its best, Shameless provided a wry social commentary on modern society. Where else could you have a parody of the Chilean mineworkers' rescue, centering on a botched attempt to break into the lottery office through the sewers? But the lame storylines of the last series proved that Frank's life on Easy Street had gone on for too long.

However, this mini-explosion could not hide one inescapable truth. The last episode of Shameless bowed out not so much with a bang, but with a whimper.

Mark Andrews