“Shameless” is actually a remake of the award-winning British TV series. It is set in the Canaryville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, but the show is actually being filmed in Los Angeles, and only exterior shots of Chicago are being shown.
The TV show is about the dysfunctional family of Frank Gallagher, a single father of six children. Frank is an irresponsible father as he spends his days always drunk, prompting his kids to fend for their own and take care of themselves.
The producers of “Shameless” however want to distinguish the show from previous American working-class shows by focusing on how Frank’s alcoholism affects his family. Creator Paul Abbott said that the show has a much graver level of poverty attached to it. It’s not just a blue-collar show, but totally no collar at all, he added.
It was John Wells who pitched that the story be turned into a TV series, believing that American television has a comedic tradition of making fun of the people in the worlds of the Gallaghers. He explained that these type of people cannot just be branded as the others because they normally live four blocks down from normal American families and two blocks over.