Credit: Showtime

This is almost too on-brand for Gallaghers, eh? An eviction, the threat of almost being homeless – that’s what, eight seasons of the show, more or less. Well, after spending 11 seasons watching the Gallaghers dodge consequences with the persistence of people who seem like they voluntarily don’t want stability, Shameless is scheduled to leave Netflix US on October 11th.

And this one feels more hurtful than the usual Netflix clear-out because Shameless has spent years sitting there like permanent furniture, ready to entertain whenever somebody fancies making an appalling decision. One episode becomes another, or Frank does something indefensible, or shameless, if you may, and there you are several hours later wondering why anybody in that family still lends him money.

That was always the peculiar pull of Shameless. These were not people you watched because they behaved well, and thank God for that, because imagine eleven seasons of the Gallaghers making sensible financial choices and discussing boundaries. Nobody is surviving that!

Lip was perhaps the most infuriating example because the intelligence was right there. You could see it. He could see it. Everybody could see it. And then he would take that enormous potential and just disappear like money disappeared from Frank’s hand.

Debbie became another source of exasperation for entirely different reasons. The older she got, the more stubborn she became about choices, and bloody hell, some of those choices. Not exactly the arc anybody saw coming. Yet that frustration was part of the appeal too, because Shameless never asked you to admire these people. It asked you to stay interested in them. For a long time, that worked well too.

The early seasons had an abrasive vitality to them. The Gallaghers were poor, but the show never turned poverty into misery porn. There was always some fresh indignity around the corner. Sadly, that balance became harder to maintain as the seasons piled up.

And just when it all started making a bit of sense, Fiona left.

Look, if you stayed with Shameless after season nine, you know the feeling. The same one we got when Michael left The Office. Fiona was the Gallagher household’s load-bearing wall, metaphorically and literally, and had walked straight out of the Gallagher house. Emmy Rossum’s departure altered the architecture of the series because Fiona had spent years giving all that recklessness some emotional ballast. Once she was gone, the show still had a body, but its heartbeat was harder to find.

That does not mean the final two seasons became rubbish. Ian and Mickey still had that emotional charge to make their story worth following, while Lip remained infuriating in the very specific way only Lip could manage.

Yet… The old spark had worn off. The one when we had Steve and Sheila and Karen and Jody around. A few storylines felt familiar, and at times it seemed like you were still watching because, well, after spending that many years with the Gallaghers, leaving them was easier said than done.

And that is probably why Shameless leaving Netflix still feels a bit sad. Not because every season was brilliant, but because the Gallaghers became very hard to leave behind, even when they were getting on your nerves.

So yes, Netflix is evicting them. Very fitting, really.

Frank would probably still refuse to leave!