Shameless Season Episode Series Premiere Recap

As you might have heard, adapting a successful UK series for a US audience is a risky business - maybe you tuned in to Showtime's other new Sunday series, 'Episodes,' which illustrates the pitfalls of such an endeavor all too well.

Adaptations are often criticized either for being too slavishly faithful to the original, or for deviating so far from the source material as to make the new version practically unrecognizable, which leaves a decidedly narrow margin for success somewhere between the two extremes. Somehow, 'Shameless' manages to walk that tightrope with surprising confidence.

Though I'm British, I never watched the UK series, but decided to check out the original pilot after seeing Showtime's interpretation, just for the sake of comparison. While the US 'Shameless' undoubtedly falls into the 'slavishly faithful' category of remakes, this actually seems to work in the show's favor, transplanting a practically identical script to an American setting and miraculously managing to improve upon its predecessor.

I'll admit, I'm strangely biased against shows from my motherland, and 'Shameless' always seemed (based on what little information I could glean from the commercials) to represent the very worst parts of British society, parts that I had no desire to spend an hour with on a weekly basis. Case in point: A negligent, alcoholic parent and the kids that needlessly suffer (and consequentially make others suffer) because of his lack of responsibility. Who wants to watch a show like that?

Apparently, I do, as long as it's an negligent, alcoholic, American parent (maybe I just have a thing for your accents). Hopefully, American audiences will be less biased against such imperfect examples of their own culture than I was against members of mine, even if these seemingly outlandish characters are more recognizable than we'd like to admit. There's nothing aspirational, nothing inspiring about Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), but who says that all escapism has to be aspirational? We laugh at Homer Simpson, but that doesn't mean we'd take parenting advice from him.

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