To make a point, Frank Gallagher is not a bad guy…at least not in the eyes of the Illinois and federal legal systems. No, Frank is rather the banality of despicability. He’s a victim of his own vices and addictions who happens to do terrible things, usually without the foresight or depth of feeling that so many of the golden age of cable drama’s complex protagonists are known for. That’s because Frank is not a hero or a villain, or even the ever increasingly ubiquitous anti-hero. He’s a schmuck. And that is why he is such a breakthrough for the evolving television drama and comedy molds of which Shameless dances between like Great Aunt Ginger on St. Paddy’s Day.

The secret strength of William H. Macy’s annually convivial turn as Frank Gallagher comes from the fact that he is not quite the product of one TV culture but two. As much the American reaction to the original UK Shameless as a totally new character, Macy’s hard-drinker owes a great debt to the Frank Gallagher of Manchester: the David Threlfall creation. As the American reimagining of the character who held together 11 long seasons of the Channel 4 series, U.S. Frank is of course informed by that more directly out-and-out comedic series about the direst of poverty in a fictional council estate in England. Yet, this Frank is also a product of a newly evolving television culture that allowed the transfer. He came at what is increasingly looking like a zenith, or at least the next era, of amazing cable television shows in the U.S. that are unrestricted by censorship or good taste; they are allowed to explore the repellant. In fact, the grayer the character, the better the drama. The combination has allowed William H. Macy’s Frank Gallagher to be part of both traditions and neither, providing a new third way.

The original Shameless is a groundbreaking comedy about the face of British poverty in a tiered class system, and those at the absolute bottom of said tiers. But it is primarily from my experience still a laugher about the shenanigans that Threlfall’s lovable sloth gets into. This is not to undersell the fact that the Frank Gallagher of the UK is a real piece of work, especially as most of the U.S. Frank’s storylines for the first season and a half were lifted directly from his British counterpart. However, due to the nature of British television, where actors’ contracts, commitments, and interests wane almost as often as the moon, it had to be a very different show than what creator Paul Abbott, who is also credited with creating and producing the U.S. series, may have originally intended. It is not really the story of one specific family behaving badly in an even worse world filled with injustice. Rather, it is the story of an entire culture with which Threlfall’s Frank passes through, one bummed couch at a time.

For those who have never watched the British series, consider that the original Fiona Gallagher (Anne Marie-Duff) ditched the family to run away with “Steve” (a very young James McAvoy) never to be seen again until the series finale in 2013 (she left in 2005). Due to the practicalities of British television scheduling, all of the “child” Gallaghers, even Liam, were gone by 2011, yet the show went on for two more years. It ultimately became “Frank the Cad’s” debauchery hour with a new family to milk dry instead of the ensemble about the Gallaghers that it continues to revolve around in the U.S. series. And it’s perhaps the spirit Paul Abbott wanted to capture when he created the original 2004 Shameless based on his own upbringing as the second youngest in a brood of nine, raised by his oldest sister who was 16 when both their parents abandoned the family for good. A U.S. market would allow a further exploration of that, and by the time Showtime adapted the Channel 4 series in 2011, two major events were in play to precipitate the crossover.

The first event that allowed a network like Showtime to seriously glance at adapting Abbott’s show was the economic downturn of 2008 and onward, facilitated by the Great Recession, which began in 2007 but really shook the country to its core in September 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. A major aspect of the U.S. version of Shameless is the American Dream, an intangible ideal sold to every schoolboy and girl from kindergarten on up. Unlike the more stringent class systems of the UK, which the 2004 Shameless mocked as unrelentingly as Abbott’s own take on Westminster with State of Play, the U.S. promises opportunity and ladders out of poverty. And yet, as millions of Americans were foreclosed on and evicted from their own homes just when the brokers that facilitated risky lending got their golden parachutes from the U.S. government, that dream seemed more unobtainable than ever.