Shameless is back on DVD for its eighth series and 100th episode. Meanwhile, series nine has just started on Channel 4. That is quite a feat for any British TV show. Indeed, nothing else can really boast that kind of run here except the news; and technically that has the largest roster of writers on the planet. In contrast, Shameless still springs almost entirely from the brain of creator Paul Abbott...thankfully, it's a quite brilliant brain, still capable of producing instalments as enticing as those early days featuring the likes of James McAvoy.

The flip-side of such longevity is that series eight isn't terribly welcoming to the newcomer, or those who've let the last couple of series shamefully slip through their viewing schedule. There's a sizeable cast of characters and only one new family, so the wealth of back-stories and feuds can be difficult to get a handle-on at first. But then you can always rely on series veteran Frank Gallagher: his opening monologue, taking in everything from Labour's tinkering with cannabis classification to the new "Con-Dem nation", is all you need to laugh along and feel safely at home on the Chatsworth estate -- not that you'd actually want to live there for a second. 

Shameless continues to boast some of the wittiest, well-written dialogue on our screens. Not  one episode passes without wry-smiles or out-right laughter. Sadly, after all this time, the plots increasingly feel like mere props to hang those hi-jinks on. The earthy realism on which the show was built is also in danger of being subsumed by surrealist laughs. This is literally the case in the early dominant story-strand concerning Frank's whereabouts after his stag-do, in which we witness the local pub blast-off into the sky in a homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It all still holds together -- with its cast of eminently likeable characters and Shakespearian set-ups (heck, the finale is a grand wedding) -- but one of Britain's greatest TV cultural offerings must someday soon be put out to pasture. Not yet though: series eight remains a corker.