My Best Thing on TV?

It came without much fanfare. An alternative history of the space race based on the premise that the USSR beats the USA to having the first man on the moon and therefore not ending the space race but escalating it into territory - a world history - that didn't happen but plausibly could have if these events had happened. 

The first series of For All Mankind had cameos from actors playing Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and John Shepherd, but it was really about the next generation of astronauts; the guys waiting in the wings as a result of the momentous setback that losing the moon caused. The heroes of the real Apollo missions become side-lined and move on; being written out of history as nearly men and ushering new heroes in to replace them in a time that was considerably more fraught and tense than it really was.

Series one was about Ed Baldwin - a Korean War vet - and his pal Gordon 'Gordo' Stevens, who replaced the old guard and made the moon their home. It was also about how women's rights and their liberation was fast forwarded beyond where it is today - in the real world. The next next generation of astronauts would be women; the next big wigs at NASA would also be women and old school Ed and Gordo were needed to help the transition.

The biggest dilemma with the first series was how to make it different enough to look different. How do you turn something as scientific and cold as space travel into a soap opera about the people at the heart of the project. Joining Ed was Karen - his wife - and their troubled son. With Gordo was his twin-engine flying ace and long suffering wife Tracy, a phenomenally gorgeous woman who was always second best to her husband's infidelity and then gets the chance to become an astronaut herself; creating all-new tensions and drama. There is Margo Madison, a women - who by association - gets elevated high in the ranks of NASA. A woman whose heart beats hot and cold depending on how she felt that particular day - a wallflower but a decent, honest woman. Then there's Ellen Wilson, a fantastic astronaut and commander who happens to be gay in a world that is less tolerant of gays than it really was, who marries a gay man to hide their secrets behind each other. They're joined by Molly Cobb and Dani Poole - a no-nonsense pilot and a black career air force pilot and they are all held together by Deke Slaytor - the controller and man responsible for trying to put the USA ahead of the USSR in the new race - to mine the moon, established a base and claim the hunk of rock as American. 

There was also a subplot about a Mexican illegal immigrant who was also a bit of a physics genius and is taken under Margo's wing. Any plot watchers would have told you that season two would obviously focus on this girl. However, one thing you can't second guess is where the writers are going; Aleida plays a big part in the second series, but she's nowhere near the focus (but that might be next season).

There were other secondary characters, all playing a vital role in building a cast of believable characters, living exciting lives and yet having to deal with also trying to be normal people. Tragedy dogs season one like a bad stain and the opening ten episodes are a lesson in loss, triumph, hope and frustration, taking in unexpected deaths, needed deceit and hopeless desperation. If this world - as 'our' world - had changed very little to how those of us old enough remember it and the escalation of technology through the new-improved space race isn't much more advanced than it really was, with some exceptions, you would almost think this 'world' was our world. That's probably why it works as a drama.

By the time season one concluded, I'd pretty much added it to my list of must-see TV. You cared about these characters even if some of them were hard to like. The first season ended with every major character suffering some form of loss that they carried into the second season. It was difficult to see how jumping the story 12 years to 1983 was going to work in terms of the characters we'd grown accustomed to and much of the first few episodes of the second series were awkward in their presumption that we would eventually piece all the missing fragments together. 

Aleida - the Mexican girl - being conspicuous by her absence until she makes a resounding return as a feisty young woman nothing like the delicate young lady we last saw, struggling to work out how to stay in the USA after everything she had was taken away.

The moon is now 'shared' by the US and the Soviets. There is a growing cold war between the superpowers and the Russians have been elevated above their standing by their successes over the Yanks. The Jamestown base where Ed, Gordo and Dani lived for months is now a proper camp with 30 astronauts there, mining for lithium and doing all number of experiments in the pursuit of helping the next big phase - the race to Mars. The Soviets' own base is never seen, but their presence and threat is always felt; with tensions on Earth rocketing out of President Reagan's control, a terrible incident on the moon sees one Russian die and another, badly wounded, asking for asylum. The space race suddenly becomes a space arms race.

Behind the threat of World War 3 is the planned Apollo-Soyez docking; the balance of this being the innocent but sexually-charged, yet odd relationship between the introverted and shy Margo and her Russian counterpart, Yuri, as they struggle to find common ground between two nations that loathe each other. We wrestle with one of the main cast's act of heroism that has now put her own career and life in jeopardy and we watch how the main cast get their own shit back together. One thing we learn from season two is do not discount any inconsequential event; don't think it is treading water to give under-focused cast members something to take up their time and earn their paycheques - this is as carefully plotted a series as a grandmaster chess tournament. Every scene has a resonance and a payback of its own; it is allegorical in such a deft way that it's only afterwards that you realise you've been sucked in by skilled writers who are making utterly mesmerising Science [fact] Fiction hidden in a soap opera. It probably wouldn't work any other way.

The ultimate pay off of season two is more tragedy; in fact far more than you'd expect. This series has the feel of how early The Walking Dead episodes were; knowing that no one is safe, that star names will die just as easily as the guys wearing the metaphoric red jerseys. Not that any of this show's 'stars' were really that; some of them had major parts to play in other shows, but generally the cast was a group of people best known for being supporting cast members, but are now probably on their way to an A or B list status. Season two ups the ante and makes you realise you're watching something truly special in a landscape of excellent TV shows.

You feel, at times, like you're watching a true historical recreation of a bygone era. The early 70s were done so well you felt you were there. The 80s - using doctored actual footage - also feels like the attention to detail is all important for you to believe in what you're watching. We're heading to the 90s next; another 12 year jump and the threat of having to get used to new characters because the main group will now be in their 60s and some will have died and some might need to be recast... 

There's a new planet to explore; probably a massive diversion from real events and a chance to take this world into places only historical fantasists can imagine. I expect China will make an entrance, but also other burgeoning economic countries, plus the desire of private business to enter this story; the writers have a largely blank slate to play with and can dip in and use pivotal actual events to progress the story. In this world John Lennon is still alive and is seen on TV screens as a key political activist. The next season of FAM might not have the fall of the Berlin wall or the Soviet Union. It might not have Bill Clinton as president or a Russian Federation. This series never had a Jimmy Carter presidency (it was Edward Kennedy's as Chappaquiddick didn't happen as a result of the Soviet moon race). The FAM world isn't that much different at the moment, but I expect it to swerve into unknown directions when it returns, but always keeping its people real enough to believe in them.

For All Mankind was one of the best things I watched on TV in 2020. It became the best thing I watched on TV in 2021.

Pop Culture is Dead to Me: The First Geek in Weeks

There's a lot to talk about. If nothing else, the pandemic seems to have flooded the world with new TV and film that is designed specifically with the geek in mind. It seems to me that the world of fantasy has had to step up to the plate and deliver, even if the results are patchy at best. So ...

Let's get the elephant or kaiju in the room out of the way first. Godzilla versus Kong is a children's film for all ages. I'm constantly fooled by these films; I think they're going to be fantastic and the spectacle is going to be so good I will walk around priapic all week, but they end up being warm bland wanks... I made the mistake of going into this film expecting there to be some woeful story woven between the unending battle scenes (like there had been in the previous Godzilla film); what there was was an hour and forty five minutes of televisual super-sugar. It was like someone gave LSD to an eight-year-old and told him to write an adventure story with two massive great beasties. That makes it sound good and on one level it is, but on so many other levels it's just infantile and a waste of some recognisable acting talent. It's proving to be very popular... I don't know if that says anything about how desperate people are for some normality in their lives that they've made this extremely well made piece of shit so popular.

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Let's throw my two-cents worth in about the big question: why are DC films so shit? As this is kind of my area of expertise, I find it ironic that DC did comics for years until Marvel came along and showed them how to do comics differently and eventually usurped them as the leading comics publisher in the Western World. There have been DC superhero film adaptations for donkeys years, most of them of independent vision - much like their comics output of the 1950s and 60s - and standalone. Even when they linked their Batman films of the 80s and 90s, it had the law of diminishing returns writ large all over them. Marvel looked like they were going to go the same way, especially when the company was essentially split up and film rights sold to all and sundry, but its gradual climb into being part of the largest entertainment industry in the world is probably down to the fact that when films finally caught up with Marvel's characters, they took the bold move of making it a shared universe from the word go.

By the time DC and Warner Brothers decided to unify and reboot their new superhero cinematic foray, Marvel was already building a universe in an oddly believable world. Iron Man was a stroke of genius in many ways, because while the character has always been a bit 'meh' in the comics, on film, with RDJ in the role of Tony Stark, you suddenly had a fantasy film that appealed to the Bond/Bourne fans and was witty and clever enough to tempt people who wouldn't dream of watching a film like that into watching it. By the time the first Avengers film came out, Marvel's cinematic universe was a guaranteed success - it was a juggernaut that wasn't going to be stopped.

DC, historically, has struggled to be ahead of the game and even when they get there they've never seemed to know how to stay there. There have been periods in the history of comics where they suddenly have a surge of popularity at the exact time Marvel hits the buffers, but they've never been able to find the right Viagra to keep themselves up.

With films their MO was basic; reboot Superman or Batman every ten years or so with a very capable director du jour and because of increased budgets and better special effects they can appease the converted with Easter Eggs of some geeky kind. The problem was as some of the producers of Marvel's X-Men and Spider-Man had discovered, that old friend the Law of Diminishing Returns is never too far away from spoiling the party, which is why the Spider-Man reboots seemed to happen so fast and why Spider-Man films work better now they've taken a new approach to them. DC's problem was it felt like Batman and Superman had already been done to death; cinematically Batman works better and like in the comics Superman suffered from essentially being too powerful making it difficult to come up with a suitable, believable, adversary.

DC, it is said, have all the best ideas, but dither about until Marvel steals them and shows how it would have worked. There is both actual and anecdotal evidence throughout the second half of the 20th century to prove this and back in 2002, long before Kevin Feige was going to create the MCU, DC had plans for an extended shared cinematic universe, but that didn't really happen until after 2013's Superman reboot The Man of Steel (a bit like with Iron Man in many ways), it then, temporarily, became the 'property' of Zack Snyder and we were treated to a number of bombastic Bruckheimer-styled slugfests in a cinematic style that just feels slightly out of kink. However, there was a anomaly - 2011's Green Lantern, a film I quite liked but bombed big time, despite having Ryan Reynolds in the lead role. Marvel kind of absorbed the second (largely standalone) Hulk film by tagging an ending on that tied it into Iron Man, despite it not being very good and not really having any connection to the Hulk as he's seen in the current MCU. In fact, the Hulk's presence in the MCU has never been dealt with, it's like it happened in that film and let's say nothing more on the matter. DC could easily have done the same with Green Lantern; it was a missed opportunity.

Man of Steel was followed by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Justice League (2017), Aquaman (2018), Shazam! (2019), Birds of Prey (2020), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). However, you can take a few of them out as they might be part of the DCEU but their relevance - at the moment - is non-existent. The problem was none of the core films were particularly good. They were big, brash and full of mind-blowing special effects, but they are all largely soulless. Marvel invented 'family' in comics and they simply transferred that effect into the movies. Create a huge soap opera with fantastic interconnecting parts that can be read alone or as a group. DC created comic characters who did the same thing month after month after month. Clark Kent was a mild mannered journalist and Superman was a god; every month Lois Lane wondered about whether the two could be the same and every month the reset button was pressed. Not until the late 1980s did DC try and make their extended comics universe a family, by then just as they were getting the Marvel idea, their competitors had already moved on in areas DC had pondered but opted against.

I don't know if this is something ingrained into the DNA of DC, but it does feel like their film adaptations could easily just reboot again under a new 'top dog', whereas Marvel's current 20-odd film legacy will always have relevance even when film #120 comes out. 

That brings me to Justice League. DC's Avengers (more irony, the Avengers were always classed as Marvel's Justice League) was on the cards the moment Man of Steel wasn't a box office flop. If Marvel can do it, so can we, shouted DC 15 years after they first thought of it. Snyder's films to date hadn't exactly set the world on fire and when he had to quit directing Justice League two-thirds of the way through, it seemed his vision was also going to become just another unfinished subplot in the dull life of the DCEU. Joss Whedon came onboard, reshot scenes, re-edited it, changed bits and pieces and the film came out in 2017 to absolutely stunned silence. I've seen the film and I can't tell you anything about it at all; it's just dreadfully forgettable. 

It felt like that phase of the extended universe was over and subsequent DCEU films have all, by and large, been utter rubbish that feel like comics plucked from a bygone era in the way they interact with the world and each other. They all look nice, they all stink the house out as far as storytelling goes...

So, I knew nothing of Zack Snyder's Justice League until I started seeing adverts for it. I don't know the reasons behind it; it feels odd that DC would allow something like this to happen, but they did and whereas the Whedon cut has been erased from my memory, this version - at just about 4 hours - is epic. It's still soulless and devoid of any real empathy, but by the end of the film you're invested enough to give a shit, which is more than any of the other films managed. I also quite like Affleck as Bruce Wayne; I shouldn't, but his line of 'I'm rich', when asked by the Flash what his super powers were made me laugh out loud.

That said, I enjoyed ZSJL, even if it was 2 hours too long and is now effectively obsolete (especially Bruce's dreams of a dystopian future). It might be why subsequent films have been a) excrement and b) standalone. DC simply doesn't know how to play with the toys [read: ideas] that Marvel introduced them to.

ZSJL is utter rubbish but as escapism in lockdown it was better than watching Boris Johnson lie to the country.

***

Wandavision was great TV. Not enough of it, but good enough to fill a void. This is where DC fail, but Marvel has mastered the art of prick teasing. Whether Wandavision was any good is another question. It was bold and definitely unusual, but it ended up being quite an unpleasant thing that was without doubt one of the bravest things a fledgling TV company (which is what this arm of Disney is) to do.

If, like me, you realised almost before it started, that this was going to be a series about grief and escapism, then pat yourself on the back. It didn't matter what flesh was put on the bones, this was going to be about wrong footing everybody and doing something extremely clever and also... have I said brave yet? This is a brave move - on two levels: the first by making Wanda a villain, albeit through obvious mental health issues, but also by making her essentially the Phoenix - from X-Men mythos - means that whatever Marvel does with the X-Men, it might not be in any familiar way. For those who haven't got a clue what I mean, Jean Grey 'died' and was resurrected by the universal Phoenix force, unfortunately it turned her into a planet devouring monster and she had to be killed. It was highly controversial as a comic, was poorly done by Fox's X-Men and now the MCU appears to be setting Wanda up as one utterly mega-powerful entity, capable, possibly of breaking down the barriers of alternative universes and destroying worlds... It's almost like Kevin Fiege saw the abomination Fox made and now wants to do it the Marvel way.

Wandavision was essentially a bridging arc. It tied up some loose ends, did a handsome job of examining the effects of such accumulative grief on someone so powerful - especially in a world that no longer has a Cap, Iron Man or Black Widow (or Vision) she can go and seek solace with. She is alone, with no one and she's gone mad. What's not to love?

***

The Falcon & The Winter Soldier is four episodes in and was I getting the feeling it's going to end up setting up another film or TV series. At 45 minutes an episode you'd expect the first three to have moved the story along pretty quickly, but it took episode four to finally tell us what this series is really about. 

The main actors are great and they've been fleshed out to a degree that sometimes comics didn't bother with and the series feels like Wandavision in that it's dealing with issues that wouldn't work that well in films, specifically the relationship between heroes and the aftermath of the reverse of the 'blip' that wiped half the life of the universe out. 

It is also funny - funnier than Wandavision - and feels like an extension of the darker Captain America films and that also isn't a bad thing. In fact, I said to the wife, it feels like an extended Marvel film.

Oh and the new Captain America - played by Wyatt Russell (who appeared in JJ Abrams Overlord, in case you were wondering where you'd seen that ugly mug before) is an arsehole and proved it in the shocking ending of ep four.

***

Remember Fringe? What a great series that was and I don't think there's been anything that quite does 'odd' as well as it did. Well, Debris might be the exception to the rule. It is about fragments of a destroyed alien spacecraft crashing into the planet bringing quite unbelievable consequences when it does. It reminds me of Casualty at times; the start is always about what is going to happen, but instead of wondering who is going to be thrown into the thresher or fall down a drain, you wonder how the next fragment of spaceship is going to interact with the world and the people.

It's also quite clever in that it starts months after the first bits of debris hit the planet; so we're walking into a series that has been going on (in the minds of the creators) a lot longer than where we started to watch; therefore it allows us to move forwards without being bogged down by the 'set-up' and it also promises to explain the past but through the eyes of a bunch of people thrown together by fate, who no longer really trust each other.

6 episodes in and it's weird and distinctly creepy and Scroobius Pip is in it as a cockney 'villain' who can teleport using bits of alien metal. The strange thing is it's almost dealing with a similar theme to that of the MCU; whereas that is having to deal with the return of 3½ billion souls and where they belong in a world that was slowly forgetting about them; this is about something oddly similar, the argument that the debris is a gift from the universe and it belongs to all people and should not be controlled by the planet's most powerful governments.

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I think it would be safe to say that the end of The Walking Dead cannot come soon enough. The tagged on extra six episodes of the most recent season were execrable - 6 x 45 minutes of some of the most boring excuses for an ongoing TV series as you could possibly imagine. Even the two episodes where you thought you might see some kind of progression ended up being handled in a very poor way; some could almost argue unnecessary additions to a dying series, with the Carol/Daryl second episode failing on almost every single front - if this is what to expect from the mooted series featuring these two main characters then I'll start watching Strictly.

Even Fear the Walking Dead seemed to have fallen into the 'we haven't got a clue what to do' camp, with the first 7 episodes of its 6th series not doing much at all to make you want to stay loyal, however on its return it showed how good this franchise can be with arguably the best episode of all the TWD series in years. It needs to keep this intensity up now it has learned to kill major characters off - pointlessly - again. Pointless deaths of major characters is what made it what it is today; 'no one is safe' was always the motto (apart from Rick Grimes) and that made it edgy. FTWD seems to have rediscovered 'edgy'.

***

I used to like cartoons, but as they became easier and cheaper to make they kind of lost that proper animation feel and anyone who watched anything by Hanna-Barbera in the 60s and 70s were always left wondering how Tom & Jerry could live in such a long house with really boring décor and the same picture hung every ten feet for several miles...

So, when I saw nothing but praise for Invincible - a comic series I vaguely recall being a bit of a fan of in the late 90s early 00s and created by Robert Kirkman, the guy behind The Walking Dead, I managed to persuade the wife to give it three episodes to see how it progressed.

I no longer 'get' cartoons. Everything kind of smacks of anime influences and they're so melodramatic. Invincible is no exception; it might have a host of well known people voicing it - Steven Yuen, JK Simmons, Sandra Oh, Zacchary Quinto, Seth Rogan, Clancy Brown, Mark Hamill, Mahershala Ali and John Hamm, to name but a few - but it's overwrought and kind of falls between two stools. It's too silly to be considered a proper adult cartoon and too violent to be considered a kids' one and frankly, after three 40 minute episodes I really didn't want to waste any of my time on it again... Shame. 

***

A quick return to Marvel: the new trailer for Loki dropped this week and it looks like its going to be huge fun and, I expect, this will be the main reason for the Multiverse of Madness due to appear in the next Dr Strange film. I really don't expect them to have a series with Loki and then kill him off at the end because he's a space-time anomaly (see Infinity War and then Endgame); it simply gives us him back to where he belongs and will obviously have massive repercussions throughout the MCU.

***

For All Mankind is still the best thing on TV at the moment. A fantastic mix of alternate history, soap opera with a side salad of Sci-Fi. It's by the guy who brought you Battlestar Galactica's reboot, but, seriously, don't let that put you off. It's ace.

***

Started really well and ended really disappointingly. That just about sums up my feelings about Resident Alien. The first five episodes were LOL-worthy and I did laugh out loud on a number of occasions. Alan Tudyk is great as Harry the alien who lands in Colorado, by mistake, kills then adopts the life and fizzog of a holidaying doctor and ends up being co-opted into the search for the killer of the resident town doctor. The problem with it started when it left behind it's small town charm and introduced a bigger picture; from that point it stopped being as funny and started to feel a bit... fake (a little like Harry).

The wife loved it, but I started to feel like it was a record that was good but after repeated plays starts to get on your nerves a little. There is enough 'intrigue' to make me want to watch the second season, now it's been renewed, but without spoiling anything for you, it seems very few people are really as they seem; too many of them are so one or two-dimensional that they either need fleshing out or killing off and a few of them are just annoying.

The comic was written by my friend Peter Hogan, so I hope his version didn't deteriorate as quickly as this TV show seemed to. Another real shame, but maybe renewal will renew the interest. Oh, and Asta has an unbelievably massive arse, it should be said, apropos of nowt. 

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And in many ways all of the above are just the tip of an iceberg heading our way over the next 12 months. we're going to have new fantasy series, new Marvel films, new Sci-Fi and new weird shit that might end up being uncategorizable. There are new anthology series scheduled, including something called Them* which looked like it might be good, but I thought that about Lovecraft Country but that turned out to be a pile of dog shit (but, frankly, doesn't everything related to HP Lovecraft and the cult of Cthulhu?). Joss Whedon's back with a steampunk-looking series about a group of women with super powers in the late 19th century called The Nevers** and there are many more of which none of them have made me wish for time to fly by so I can see them...

* We watched the first episode of Them last night. It's overwrought and heavy handed with the racism, but there's also something a wee bit creepy about it and not just the neighbours; there's some other horror, far worse than bigoted racists and it seems to reside in the house now owned by the black people.

** We have the first episode of The Nevers to watch tonight.

***

And finally, the very last episode of my beloved Shameless was sad, tragic, disappointing, fulfilling, funny, hopeful, poignant and tipped its hat, bowed and honoured the source material with Frank's final monologue which was almost the same one as you used to hear at the start of every episode of the UK version. It was also the one thing it always aspired to be across nearly 12 years; it was real.

Shameless: US & Them

In January 2004, Channel 4 unveiled one of its most ambitious and controversial social commentary dramadies. Shameless - about life on the fictional Chatsworth Estate in Manchester - featured some absolute giants of British film, theatre and TV. The who's who included: David Threlfall, Anne-Marie Duff, James McAvoy, Maxine Peake, Dean Lennox-Kelly, Maggie O'Neill and Pauline McLynn (Go on, go on, go on)...

The first few series were quite unbelievable and, indeed, shameless. It portrayed the seedier side of council estate life faced with the adversity of dealing with the 'establishment', but it was also an extremely funny show, which bordered on comedy in large amounts, mainly to offset the bleak existence the Gallagher family faced. 

It had some drawbacks, as creator Paul Abbott explained in 2008, after half his cast had left to go onto bigger and arguably better things. Duff & McAvoy married and went off to become A listers, as did Peake; others became constants on British TV or just famous faces on the screen renowned for being in Shameless. By the end only Threlfall remained as the titular head of the family Frank Gallagher and by the end he had become some kind of embarrassing parody of himself; this pointless waster full of drink and drugs wandering aimlessly through life, always inebriated in some way or another. We had given up on the show long before it was cancelled. Not only had Frank become a parody, but the show had long lost its sense of family, friends and togetherness through adversary and I heard tales that the stories became even more far-fetched, the cast as far removed from the original series' as possible and it simply lost its way. Abbott claimed that losing so many talented actors meant he was constantly changing the story; that he didn't have the ability to tie actors into long contracts like they did in the USA (nor would he want to force them to stay if they had better opportunities), therefore he was constantly having to reinvent the show to suit whoever turned up every new series to work.

The UK version of Shameless finished in May 2013, almost 2½ years after Shameless (US) debuted. The similarities were obvious; it was about the Gallagher family and to a certain extent their friends and neighbours Kevin and Veronica and they lived in a run down area of Chicago (rather than Manchester) and the first series of the US version was a scene-for-scene remake of the first series of the UK version. The only real differences were changes to dialogue and locations.

The UK version's Frank Gallagher (Threlfall) was essentially a lovable arsehole with a penchant for booze, drugs and parties. He was irresponsible and a passenger in his own home, which was largely run by his eldest daughter Fiona (Duff). His wife had long disappeared and his assortment of kids ranged from Fiona in her 20s to Liam - the youngest (about 6 at the start). In between were Philip (Lip), Ian, Carl and Debbie. 

The US version's Frank Gallagher was as comical and as large as life as the UK version, but under the masterful guidance of William H. Macy (Fargo), the comedy was downplayed and the nastiness ramped up. US Frank was still a figure of ridicule and pity, but he was also a devious, uncaring, untrustworthy piece of shit, who, unlike his British counterpart, literally would have sold his own children for some drugs. Like the UK version, it was Fiona who acted as parent, sister and protector, Frank was too irresponsible to be trusted with anything.

Like the UK version, the characters had their basic traits: Lip was a borderline genius beset with drink and anger issues; Ian, a closeted gay, trying hard to keep his secret from those around him, unaware that most of then knew. Carl & Debbie were both young kids learning about the world of dole scrounging and living off the State and both were slightly sociopathic. Then there was Liam, the result of a genetic throwback in Monica Gallagher's ancestry and unlike the UK version was most definitely a black kid - the strange absurdity of having a black biological true sibling was enhanced by the fact that we were introduced to him as a baby in diapers and he still hadn't spoken a single word by the time series eight finished.

While the first season of the US version stayed true to Paul Abbott's original British series, season two on went in directions Abbott (and showrunner John Wells) could never have possibly achieved in the UK version, as all actors in the main roles were contracted for a minimum of seven seasons, if the series didn't get cancelled. Abbott said in an interview on US TV that he could finally tell some of the stories he'd been unable to tell because his UK actors all went on to bigger things leaving gaps to fill.

Unlike the UK version which seemed like a who's who of stars, only Macy was particularly well known. Joan Cusack played his love interest for the first few series, but she left and Emmy Rossum played Fiona - she was best known for a co-starring role in the indie film Beautiful Creatures and a failed music career (she also liked to get naked, an awful lot). Outside of these, all of the cast with the exception of Fiona's love interest - Justin Chatwin - were largely unknown actors or newcomers and he was only known for his role as Tom Cruise's son in the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds. The anonymity of the cast helped make the series more ... visceral.

By the time the second season ended, if your were watching Shameless US you most definitely weren't watching a rehash of the UK version and by season four, the outrageous plots and breathtakingly jaw-dropping antics of the Gallaghers' meant you sometimes wondered how the show got onto US TV screens. Barely an episode went by without you hiding behind your fingers, or wincing or thinking, 'You have got to be fucking kidding me?'

It was quite brilliant. The real point was if you could think of something really shameless, then this TV show had already beaten you to it with balls on. Its brazen ability to tackle literally any subject, however taboo, and put a black comedy twist on it was genius. It was bold, bawdy, sexy, dirty, grubby, vile, nasty, violent, distasteful and... shameless, and within four years had firmly put the UK version in its place. Macy won awards as did Rossum and the rest of the family all had stories, arcs and lives that elevated them above just cast making up the numbers.

Lip - played by Jeremy Allen White - took the UK character's brilliance and ran with it. Looking like a young modern Robert Mitchum, White bestowed so much to his character that even now, 11 years down the road, I look at his character and think 'you're the reason I stuck with this show even when it got a bit patchy, because you are a quite brilliant actor and your portrayal of this oh-so tragic Gallagher brother is unsurpassed. If you haven't fallen in total love with the character by the end of season two you have no soul. Lip is the cleverest person in the show, he's also a hopeless alcoholic, romantic and desperate for a happy ending.

Ian - played by the now rising star Cameron Monaghan (the Joker in Gotham) - is a bipolar gay man who acts like a bruiser, is married to a psychopath and has done everything from join the army, served time, been the new Messiah and worked as a pole dancer in a gay club. He is a complex and emotional character and arguably the heart of the family; he's the one who actually looks like he cares, most of the time.

Debbie - played by Emma Kenney - was eight when she was cast and is cut from a similar character cloth to that of her late mother; she's selfish, self-determined, sexually-ambivalent, a single mother at 14 and absolutely barking mad and selfish to boot; she is both utterly dislikeable and lovable. You wouldn't let this girl have a child, yet Franny - her daughter - appears to be growing up far more normal than any of her aunts and uncles.

Carl - played by Ethan Cutkosky, the only known actor among the children for his work as a child actor - is an out-and-out psychopath who ends up finding his way into the police force after stints as an army cadet, burger flipper and Rastafarian drug dealer (he's not the black one).

Liam - played in the last three series by the brilliant Christian Isaiah - is in Lip's league as far as intelligence goes, but he's a black kid from an Irish-American family and faces all the shit that a black kid in Chicago would expect to face, especially now that he's 11. He is, in many ways, the next big tragedy in the series; he simply doesn't deserve to have been born into such a family of scumbags, but he's learned from the professionals and his relationship with Frank in latter seasons is almost sweet. I mean, Frank doesn't really like his kids - that's part of the ongoing story - but he has a soft spot for Liam and vice versa.

At the end of season 9, Emmy Rossum as Fiona finally left the show to pursue other things. As the actual head of the family, her journey from lovestruck woman in season one to hardened, angry, drunken coke-head in her final season ranks alongside Lip's decline as one of the most tragic journeys in the show. Some would call her a slapper; others would call her desperate for love because she would often give it out and seemingly receive little back. It was clear from about season 7 that they either had to do something radical with the character or write her out of the series. Rossum chose to leave and has largely been absent from screens since. As I write this there are just two episodes of the show left and my hope is she comes back for the final episode (like Fiona did in the final UK episode)...

Supporting characters Kev and Vee are probably the most consistently written people in the show; played admirably by Steve Howey and Shanola Hampton, this mix-race couple are both as sharp as knives and as stupid as clotted cream; they run the local bar and are really just part of the extended Gallagher family. I believe these two will get the real happy ending.

And that's the reason I'm writing this now rather than in two weeks when the final episode is shown. I expect that a show that has flirted with tragedy as often as it has with controversy is likely to end with a finality that will prevent at least one major character from being included in a resurrected series in 15 years time, should that ever happen. I also think some of the characters will get as close to a positive end as is possible, because no one wins the lottery in Shameless, no one gets the big breaks and everyone seems to go back to square one in this seemingly ongoing game of snakes and ladders... 

I've invested 11 years in this TV show, for at least seven of those years I proudly boasted it was my favourite TV show and I think the ending might be a bit too emotional for me to sit and write anything about it. 

What started as a mid-season filler show for six years, ended up as a prime time Showtime winner (and possibly the reason why things started to be toned down, once more people were watching). It has been full of births, deaths, marriages and people being left at the altar. It's had scams, miracles, unlikely affairs, unbelievable situations, murders, suicides and really reflected just what being poor in the USA really means for millions of people. As a social commentary it was never far from being slightly far-fetched... or was it? As a Brit watching from the other side of the Atlantic, living in the USA has never looked less appealing.

I can criticise the show; for starters it has always had a habit of leaving some plot lines dangling or ending stories without any real resolution, but isn't that life? You might get invested in a storyline only for it to be forgotten about or swept under the carpet or explained away in half a throwaway sentence. Carl's life seems to have been a constant source of unfinished storylines which I now think reflects the mad nature of his character and the fact that sometimes, in life, there are no outcomes, let alone satisfactory ones. Shameless (US) does this so well it sometimes feels like a social commentary documentary rather than the blackest of comedies. 

How Frank gets so much sex with gorgeous women is also a puzzle, but it's happened consistently since season one, so you take it for granted that he'll use his wily charms to get into bed with someone far too good for him at least once a season. But Frank now has dementia and a character you will struggle to have any empathy for is slowly becoming another tragedy in the vast unfolding tragedy that has been the Gallagher family for over a decade. I don't expect we'll see another show quite like it in our lifetimes and that's a good thing, because while this version is an imitation, it's one that does it better than the source material.

If you ever fancy watching 11 seasons of classic TV you should start and end here.