Shameless is more about family than poverty. Yes, the Gallaghers are dirt poor, and ‘joe-jobs’ might be putting it kindly for a family paying bills with disability cheques and contributions from the church collection plate. But if Shameless works – and it does – then it’s because it’s not really about those things. In recognising that poor is no fun for anyone, it focuses instead on a family being down and out, but pretty fucking okay with it. The original British show may have passed me by, but having initially struggled to recognise the Americanised Office as simply a different kind of show, I wonder if it doesn’t hurt to come to a remake without expectation. After all, if I wanted that other show, I’d be watching it.

The US pilot has a prevailing sense of anarchy that belies the slick precision underpinning the chaos. For a show about a rabble it feels remarkably professional, but not in a bad way: it just seems like good TV. Pilots often struggle with the demands of outlining a premise and reams of backstory, while telling a story gripping enough to sell the show. How do you introduce these new characters and avoid the dreaded moment when they must clumsily refer to one another by their full name? Shameless might be helped by Showtime’s generous one hour slots, but there’s more to it than that. They drop you into a world already on the move, with the players jostling for position at the breakfast table. We observe a well-oiled machine that first sends the electric bill round for everyone to throw in a buck, then follows it with gulped-down cereal and the kids being harried out the door, past the dryer propped closed with a rickety chair. 5 minutes in and already you’re exhausted.

Surprisingly, the principal character here isn’t William H Macy’s Frank who, as a drunken father of six, is more the drunk than the father. Creator Paul Abbott wrote both this and the original, so assumingly it’s a faithful translation, but the action instead focuses on Fiona (Emmy Rossum). With mum nowhere to be seen and Dad somewhere in the gutter, everyone looks to her for direction, and if you’re tempted to think she’s just the best of a bad bunch then you’re missing her potential. Handsome Steve isn’t, but then he’s not from around here. He drives a BMW for crying out loud; I’m surprised he even drives through the Projects, let alone parks there. But there he is, him and Fiona having the kind of animal sex that only ever happens on screen: food gets upturned and plates crash helplessly to the floor as the kitchen is broken apart in the interests of carnal relations.

I’d be thinking about a morning hangover spent cleaning all that up, but I suppose that’s why I’m not having sex like in the movies.

Yes, that’s the reason.

They’re interrupted by the police knocking at the door, dragging Frank home from a night out. They’re all on first name terms, so you guess this isn’t the first time Frank has been unceremoniously set down by the kitchen cabinet. “I wouldn’t put him near a carpet until his pants dry out a bit” shrugs the officer. He’s pushing 50 and on disability, living a world away from the kind of upward social mobility the government likes to crow about. If there’s such a thing as ‘responsibility’ and ‘duty’, then Frank’s responsibility is to drink himself into trouble, and your duty to get him home without anyone finding out he’s scamming Social Security. There’s a lot of bumbling, not a lot of fighting; he’s a happy drunk really, and hey: the bills get paid. Not by him, but they do.

The biggest revelation about Shameless is that it dares to defy convention. There’s a tendency for dramas like this to render the characters angry, two-dimensional hick stereotypes; ‘My Name Is Earl’ was particularly guilty of it. But the Gallaghers are a family that share an odd affection for one another. Take the two eldest brothers: we join Lip as his neighbour goes down on him during one of their regular tutoring sessions, the revelation of calculus as an aphrodisiac a surprise to him and everyone else. When he begins to suspect his brother might be gay (the stash of butch wank-mags give it away even if being a weekend Paratrooper doesn’t), what does he do? He takes Ian along to that neighbour and she gets right to it, as if it were all totally normal. “Like playing pool with a rope” she offers as evidence of his emerging sexuality. Other shows might have angled into an expose on family intolerance, but Shameless proves itself better than that, with Lip emerges with a strange kind of sweetness that I found touching. I wasn’t expecting that.

The problem is, you might; you were there the first time around. What’s going to be your reaction to ragtag Americans impersonating characters you’ve grown to love? I can’t answer that for you, but let me offer this: this is no Coupling or Spaced. It’s not The Thick Of It. Shameless isn’t another in a line of remade and aborted shows that exist only to remind us lightning can’t easily be re-captured. There are no faked Manc accents, no awkward British colloquialisms. West Wing fans will find doubting the motivations of producer John Wells easy enough, but his vision of Shameless is humourous and spiky, and it doesn’t root around in its filth nearly as much as you fear. I’m yet to be convinced that Macy, for all his mastery, is the right man for the role of Frank – he all too often plays to the back-row when dialling it down would be more effective – but the strength surrounding him has me open to being convinced.

Whatever your take on the merits of translating shows like this to an American audience, Shameless is good on its own merits. If it captures the essence of the original then all the better, but this version – like The Office before it – has all the ingredients for something new and, dare I say it, better.