Last outing for Frank Gallagher

Shameless creator Paul Abbott has called time on Frank Gallagher after 11 series of the hit TV drama.

The writer announced that dysfunctional Gallagher and his family will make one last outing on the Chatsworth Estate with a new Channel 4 series to be broadcast early next year.

Its broadcast, in 2013, will mark 10 years since the drama was first filmed in Manchester in 2003.

Writer Paul said: "Its 10th anniversary seems a fitting time to shut the book on Shameless.

"We've had an absolute ball making this stuff up for a living. We've given back in spades and got away with absolute murder, on behalf of such a fantastically outspoken audience.

"But this is also the year my dad died and he was, in abstract, my core inspiration for starting the whole Shameless party rolling, I wanted to make invisible people vivid.

"Closing the two eras in the same year feels very right. Now I'm off to build the next whatever-it-is."

Shameless, starring David Threlfall as Gallagher, helped launch the careers of James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff and Maxine Peake and spawned a US version of the show.

Channel 4 chief creative officer Jay Hunt said: "Shameless, ground-breaking when it launched and gob-smacking ever since, has over the years built a loyal following.

"We are in Paul Abbott's debt for bringing his defiantly dysfunctional band of characters to Channel 4 and I'm delighted to say we have other drama projects with Paul in the pipeline."