--- title: "Shameless" year: 2011 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/shameless-2011" fi1m_score: 70 critics_score: 55 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T00:54:45.799011+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T00:54:46.350870+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Shameless (2011) Created by Paul Abbott, John Wells · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Comedy **Fi1m score: 70** · Critics 55 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* A house with no heating, six children, and not a bad set of teeth among them > John Wells moves Paul Abbott’s Manchester family to Chicago and gets the noise, the warmth and the children exactly right. What he cannot manage is poverty that looks like poverty, or the sense to stop before eleven seasons. ## Synopsis The South Side of Chicago, in winter. Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum) is raising five younger brothers and sisters in a cramped house with one bathroom and a jar on the kitchen shelf for the gas bill. Their father, Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), drinks whatever money reaches him and is carried home unconscious by the police. Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) charges classmates for his homework; Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) works the till at the corner shop. Next door, Kevin Ball (Steve Howey) and Veronica Fisher (Shanola Hampton) help where they can. On a rare night out, Fiona’s bag is snatched in a club, and a car thief, Steve Wilton (Justin Chatwin), chases it down and would like to come home with her. ## Review Paul Abbott’s [*Shameless*](https://film.one/tv/shameless) was about a Manchester estate and a father who drank the child benefit. John Wells has moved the Gallaghers to the South Side of Chicago, kept the names and most of the first series’ plots, and run the thing for eleven seasons and 134 episodes from 2011. The early years are good, loud, generous television with a proper family at the centre of it. The later years are the same family doing the same things with less reason, and the cast has been too good-looking from the start. If the genre is yours, the first three or four seasons are worth your evenings. The pilot, directed by Mark Mylod, sets the tone in its first minutes. Frank Gallagher tells us over the credits who his children are and what they are for, and then we watch the morning: six people and one bathroom, Fiona putting out cereal, everyone dropping a note or a coin into the jar on the kitchen shelf so the gas stays on. It is fast and it is funny and nobody explains anything, and it tells you more about how this house works than a season of exposition would. Wells writes it as a machine of small transactions and Mylod shoots it like a kitchen he has actually stood in. Emmy Rossum is the reason it holds. Her Fiona is tired in the way people are tired at twenty-one when they have been a parent since twelve, and Rossum never asks us to admire her for it. She is sharp with the children, sharper with men, and she cries once in the first season, in a hallway, quietly, and we found ourselves more shaken by it than the scene seemed to want. It is the moment the show stops being a comedy about a drunk and becomes a drama about the people who clear up after him. Jeremy Allen White’s Lip, clever and furious and already half out of the door, is the other performance that lasts. Cameron Monaghan’s Ian and Noel Fisher’s Mickey Milkovich, who arrives later in the run and stays, give the show its best long story, and its most honestly written one. Then there is William H. Macy. He is a fine actor having a wonderful time, and that is the difficulty. His Frank is eloquent, quick, delighted with himself, a man who can talk his way out of a bar tab and into a hospital bed. The writers, Nancy Pimental and Krista Vernoff and Etan Frankel among them, hand him speeches, and he delivers them beautifully. We laughed at nearly all of them and felt slightly grubby afterwards, because Frank’s charm is the show’s alibi for him, and it works on us the way it works on the children. Abbott’s original Frank was a wreck you could smell. Macy’s is a wreck you would buy a drink. The British reviews in 2011 were sour about this, and about the rest of the cast, and they had a point they then overstated. Everyone in the Gallagher house is handsome. The winters are Chicago winters and nobody looks cold. The house is shabby in a way a production designer has arranged and lit, with clutter in the right places and never quite enough of it. It matters, because this is a show whose whole subject is not having enough, and the picture keeps telling us otherwise. What the reviews missed is that Wells has kept the thing Abbott cared about most, which is that the children love each other and the show loves them, and that survives the styling. It does not survive the length. By the seventh or eighth season the scheme-of-the-week has hardened into a format, Frank’s monologues have become a weekly turn, and the show has stopped asking what happens to a family like this and started asking what happens next. Directors as capable as Mimi Leder and Adam Bernstein pass through and cannot change what the scripts are for. Abbott’s version had the same problem and ran nearly as long, so this is a fault in the house rather than the tenants. Watch the first three seasons, with the sound up, and stop whenever the jar on the shelf stops meaning anything to you. It carries a 15 certificate, and it earns it in the first ten minutes. *Fi1m score 70, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (6) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (90/100, inferred): The critic calls Shameless excellent and compelling television from the first moment, praising the faithful American adaptation of the British original and the strong ensemble cast, especially the heartfelt stories of the kids revolving around the drunken father. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/tv-review-episodes-shameless-67773/) - **The Guardian** (30/100, inferred): The US remake of the British series is competent but ultimately inferior, primarily because the cast is too polished and glamorous compared to the original's gritty portrayal. It mostly serves as a reminder of how strong the UK version was in its early days. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/23/shameless-us-william-h-macy) - **The Telegraph**, Michael Deacon (30/100, inferred): The US version is funny in places thanks to the familiar script but undermined by American casting that makes even the poorest characters look too attractive and articulate. William H Macy's Frank lacks the shambolic hopelessness of the original. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8596334/Shameless-US-More4-review.html) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the series has limited charms and wallows in dreariness without enough dramatic compensation, though the kids' stories provide some soul. It realistically portrays struggle but plays like a poor relative compared to richer TV dramas. [Read](https://variety.com/2011/tv/reviews/shameless-1117944246/) - **Collider**, Ethan Anderton (85/100, inferred): The review finds the show a promising family drama with an engaging ensemble led by Emmy Rossum and William H. Macy, noting its realistic portrayal of a struggling lower-class family with comedy and drama. [Read](https://collider.com/shameless-review/) - **Paste**, Tim Basham (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the tremendous cast, smart pacing, and fresh storyline of the US remake, highlighting Emmy Rossum's standout performance and William H. Macy's natural fit as the dysfunctional patriarch. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/shameless/shameless-review-series-premiere) ## Details - **Created by:** Paul Abbott, John Wells - **Creator:** Paul Abbott, John Wells - **Director:** Iain B. MacDonald, Mark Mylod, Christopher Chulack, John Wells, Anthony Hemingway, Mimi Leder, Silver Tree, David Nutter, Sanaa Hamri, William H. Macy, Peter Segal, Zetna Fuentes, Wendey Stanzler, Gary B. Goldman, Anthony Hardwick, Loren Yaconelli, John Dahl, Alex Graves, Emmy Rossum, Erin Feeley, Allison Liddi-Brown, Michael Morris, John M. Valerio, Shari Springer Berman, Roberto Sneider, Randall Einhorn, Lynn Shelton, Nisha Ganatra, Robert Pulcini, Rob Hardy, Regina King, Satya Bhabha, Kevin Bray, Jeffrey Reiner, Daniella Eisman, Jennifer Arnold, Danny Cannon, Scott Frank, Jake Schreier, Kat Coiro, James Ponsoldt, Shanola Hampton, Ruben Garcia, Anna Mastro, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Rose Troche, Michael Uppendahl, Todd Holland, Richie Keen, Stephen Hopkins, Craig Zisk, Jude Weng, J. Michael Muro, Steve Shill, Adam Bernstein - **Writer:** Nancy Pimental, John Wells, Etan Frankel, Sheila Callaghan, Krista Vernoff, Joe Lawson, Davey Holmes, Molly Smith Metzler, Philip Buiser, Mike O'Malley, Alex Borstein, Dominique Morisseau, Paul Abbott, Sherman Payne, Mark Steilen, Cindy Caponera, Corina Maritescu, William H. Macy, Steven Schachter, LaToya Morgan, Nathan Louis Jackson - **Music:** Freddie Gibbs - **Producer:** Princess O'Mahoney - **Cast:** Emmy Rossum as Fiona Gallagher; William H. Macy as Frank Gallagher; Justin Chatwin as Steve Wilton/Jimmy Lishman; Jeremy Allen White as Lip Gallagher; Ethan Cutkosky as Carl Gallagher; Shanola Hampton as Veronica Fisher; Steve Howey as Kevin Ball; Emma Kenney as Debbie Gallagher - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 9 January 2011 - **Genres:** Drama, Comedy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tvkYS5cA58 ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd - Apple TV: buy, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Shameless* (2004), Fi1m 75: Abbott’s original, colder and dirtier, with a Frank you can smell from the sofa — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/shameless.md) - *The Royle Family* (1998): The same sofa, the same telly, no plots at all, and funnier for it - *Roseanne* (1988), Fi1m 84: American working-class family comedy that knew exactly what the gas bill cost — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/roseanne.md) - *The Bear* (2022): Jeremy Allen White back in Chicago, in a kitchen, still furious and still clever - *Fish Tank* (2009), Fi1m 85: Andrea Arnold’s estate teenager, one summer, one flat, and no jokes to hide behind — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/fish-tank.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/shameless-2011