A Shameless long run to make a writer proud Members of the cast of Shameless, the long-running British comedy series by screenwriter Paul Abbott about a bunch of no-hopers living on a Manchester council estate. TWO weeks ago, Paul Abbott watched the filming of the final scene of Shameless, his most popular creation. He felt proud, obviously. The semi-autobiographical television series he created established Abbott as a singular voice in British television. That voice grew louder as he also created in quick time the drama series Clocking Off and the wonderful British miniseries about politics and the newsroom, State of Play. Later both Shameless and State of Play were remade in the US, the latter as a film starring Russell Crowe. As Abbott watched the final scene of series 10, it wasn't so much pride at his achievement but pride "that I was able to be proud." "I've got bipolar (disorder) which makes you kick yourself to death," he says, with a sigh. But I stood there and thought: I defy anybody to top that. Shameless first went to air in 2004; State of Play in 2002. He describes "the last 10 years (as) the most valuable years of my life." "The whole Shameless thing was one thing but a whole lot of other things happened subsequently," he says. Within 12 months I created Shameless and State of Play and all the stuff that's come from that is just phenomenal. Abbott wasn't a two-trick pony though. He wrote for Coronation Street and wrote and produced Cracker, starring Robbie Coltrane, before creating the police drama serial starring Robson Green, Touching Evil, among others. In athletic terms, Abbott was "in the zone" in the mid 2000s, although he has barely let up. His most recent series, Hit & Miss, about a transgender woman who's a contract killer (played by Chloe Sevigny) aired here recently and this week his growing production company, AbbottVision, announced it would adapt the hit French miniseries, Les Revenants. He's also replacing Shameless with a "jet-black comedy" about a police station overlooking a council housing estate. Abbott concedes such a prolific output isn't such a good thing for a bipolar screenwriter. He laughs, saying the "best and worst thing" that happened to him was after every Christmas looking at film and TV database imdb.com and noticing the very regular patterns in his annual output. "And I didn't want to acknowledge my bipolarity as something that contributed to my creative output," he says. My CV was like a psychiatrist's chat, so obviously bipolar. Now, when analysing pieces that I've done, I feel a lot more proud. That comes with maturity and sustained success helps. Abbott's unique visions arrived as television drama grew into a place where it is now regarded as more adventurous than cinema. Ten years ago, critics blinked somewhat incredulously at Shameless, an unlikely black comedy about a bunch of young rapscallions on a Manchester council estate. Abbott laughs again. I just loved a vehicle that allowed me to get away with murder. "The core DNA of Shameless is making people who don't want to watch it watch comedy," he says. It was pantomime sneaking in social observation aspects under the radar. You've got to make the pantomime big enough, so talkable, that people love the guy (Frank, the single father of six, played by David Threlfall in Britain and William H. Macy in the US). Nowadays, audiences don't blink at what might have once seemed unlikely, dense entertainment including Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy or Abbott's Hit & Miss. He recalls working with Laura Ziskin, the late producer of the Spider-Man series, on ideas for US television. "She said television is just a lot more powerful," he says. You can be more influential with television made well and it's so easy to make well if you expect it. And they make television well in the US. The producers and writers of the US version of Shameless, for instance, immediately "had a sudden grip on its humanity." Similarly, British television is becoming more adventurous. Abbott jokes that Hit & Miss is about "a mother of five with a dick who worked as a hitman, and we got that on network television and I'm really proud of that and proud of (Sky network's director of entertainment) Stuart Murphy for recognising there is a grown-up television. They're not just soaps with swear words. Ten years ago, Abbott's inclusion as a keynote guest at the National Screenwriters Conference could have been viewed as fanciful. He was a one-off. A decade later, his quality across a number of programs means he will be a popular guest at the Australian Writers Guild conference on the Mornington Peninsula later this month. Although I have to question what he means about television being easy to make well if you expect it. "So many writers sit there and say 'I'll never get away with that, they won't let me do that'," Abbott explains. Don't f . . king ask them what they want. Just compel them to read it. You've got to move around them like a bar of soap and treat the audience with the utmost respect. Somebody with a remote will turn it on. Abbott recalls his testy relationship with his father, who never spoke a word about his son's work. Not that the son cared. But he defied his father to watch the first episode of State of Play. "Of course he didn't say 'well done' or anything like that," Abbott says. He said: 'That's ridiculous I didn't have time to make a cup of tea.' He didn't realise he was giving me a compliment! Nevertheless, logically Abbott's devil-may-care attitude shouldn't have worked so well in television. And he concedes he thought he would "sneak Shameless in. I really didn't expect it to hit the valve it did with the public. He remembers BBC and ITV executives asking him why he would bring the show to them. "They didn't have the courage," he says. And what Abbott can teach is that screenwriters need to "surprise people with how they start things" and "make people skip 10 steps to get there." And to get there, to make it to a place where something unique hits the page, writers need to throw caution to the wind. "It's called stream of consciousness," he says. Journalists know you can sit there writing something and it's a bit out of body because it's so fast, so good. That moment is something that sounds a little bit more or less spiritual but when you've experienced it, I know the writing's going to be the best it could be. To find that, he says he encourages people not to self-edit pre-emptively. It's allowed to be shit first time. The first draft I call throwing rubble down, it's rubble," he says. And the ones who dare to stand out, work more and for double the wage.