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Fitzgerald Fortune wrote:

I'm glad that SCREEN WIPE is back on television!

I never liked SHAMELESS. To me, it seemed like a load of gutter-level posturing concocted by media types over their morning frappa-lappa-vanilla bullGrit things. I couldn't find the series funny, because I grew up knowing people like the characters in that show; and although they may appear to be amusing to an outsider, when you have to deal with them on a daily basis they are far less entertaining and can be quite threatening. I couldn't detach myself from what to my mind was a bad, patronising class-based joke that was being made by people who live in the ivory tower of TV Land.

I found the show's message enormously offensive. The show seemed to suggest that the Gallaghers were representative of the working class, working against a common class enemy: the middle class, whose interests are protected by the police. What the show failed to deal with was the mayhem that people like the Gallaghers cause for honest working class people, who very often aren't protected by the police and who tend to have to live in very close proximity to people like the Gallaghers. Those people are the forgotten victims of this class war, and by romanticising the Gallaghers SHAMELESS spat in the face of every working class victim of people like the Gallaghers.

It's all very well for television producers and journos to praise the show's 'ASBO chic', but you see a very different side of the coin when a kid who looks like one of the characters from SHAMELESS is shoving dog crap through your letterbox or kicking your neighbour's cat; and you know that if you report a crime the police will take one look at your post code and decide that as you live amongst the yobbos, instead of sending a police officer round, they will instead give you a crime number. (My recent run-in with the law opened my eyes to just how differently the supposed 'middle class' are treated by the police: when I told the operator where I lived, she seemed quite blase about the incident, but when I told her I taught at the college, all of a sudden she became quite polite and the gears were set in motion much more quickly.)

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Edge44 wrote:

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Fitzgerald Fortune wrote:

I'm glad that SCREEN WIPE is back on television!

I never liked SHAMELESS. To me, it seemed like a load of gutter-level posturing concocted by media types over their morning frappa-lappa-vanilla bullGrit things. I couldn't find the series funny, because I grew up knowing people like the characters in that show; and although they may appear to be amusing to an outsider, when you have to deal with them on a daily basis they are far less entertaining and can be quite threatening. I couldn't detach myself from what to my mind was a bad, patronising class-based joke that was being made by people who live in the ivory tower of TV Land.

I found the show's message enormously offensive. The show seemed to suggest that the Gallaghers were representative of the working class, working against a common class enemy: the middle class, whose interests are protected by the police. What the show failed to deal with was the mayhem that people like the Gallaghers cause for honest working class people, who very often aren't protected by the police and who tend to have to live in very close proximity to people like the Gallaghers. Those people are the forgotten victims of this class war, and by romanticising the Gallaghers SHAMELESS spat in the face of every working class victim of people like the Gallaghers.

It's all very well for television producers and journos to praise the show's 'ASBO chic', but you see a very different side of the coin when a kid who looks like one of the characters from SHAMELESS is shoving dog crap through your letterbox or kicking your neighbour's cat; and you know that if you report a crime the police will take one look at your post code and decide that as you live amongst the yobbos, instead of sending a police officer round, they will instead give you a crime number. (My recent run-in with the law opened my eyes to just how differently the supposed 'middle class' are treated by the police: when I told the operator where I lived, she seemed quite blase about the incident, but when I told her I taught at the college, all of a sudden she became quite polite and the gears were set in motion much more quickly.)

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Your passion oozes through every word, and I agree wholeheartedly. I bought into the first season of SHAMELESS, thinking it was very funny, but then the second season continued the same old model and jokes until, inevitably, it forced me to question just exactly what it was the creators were actually saying?'

I too was brought up in an environment similar to SHAMELESS and you're right - it's definitely not funny.

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NovelNymph wrote:

UGLY BETTY is back! Yay.

I'm watching the filthy Californication starring David Duchovny. I used to love him in X Files, now everybody loves him in this new series - literally.

Can I just say, best advert of the year goes to the Phil Collins, drumming Gorilla for Cadburys. Who thought it up? What does it have to do with chocolate? Who cares?

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