Those missing Shameless will welcome this pacy and provocative new series by writer Paul Abbott

Acclaimed TV writer Paul Abbott has had a hand in other dramas like 2012’s transsexual hitman series, Hit and Miss, starring Chloë Sevigny, but it is over a decade since he created his landmark hit Shameless. Much like Steptoe and Son or Only Fools and Horses, Shameless was a generation-defining class comedy, so successful that it has become a kind of shorthand for describing feckless behaviour in deprived circumstances.

Those missing the series’ dramatic intensity, salty humour and larger-than-life characters like Frank Gallagher will welcome Abbott’s new work, No Offence. While most of the cast of Shameless spent a good part of their time trying to outwit the law, No Offence jumps across the legal divide to a Manchester police department headed by the matriarchal DI Vivienne Deering (the ever-superb Joanna Scanlan)…