After first taking to our screens in 2004, David Threlfall will be hanging up his Frank Gallagher wig in early 2013, as that's when Shamless is due to end - with a massive paaah'eeeh. Some could argue it should've ended after Anne-Marie Duff and James McAvoy departed, i.e. after series 2.
Paul Abbott - who created the series based on his own experience of growing up on an estate - 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."
Channel 4's Chief Creative Officer Jay Hunt added: "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. It's not over yet and I wait to see how Paul, David Threlfall and the talented team at Company Pictures create a fitting farewell to Frank and co on screen early next year."
For those of you who may miss it terribly, William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum still giving proceedings a US spin. They're only on series three over there, so only another 10 to go. Yaaaaay.
