Shameless writer to create C4 cop comedy drama

(Image credit: PA Archive/Press Association Ima)

Shameless creator Paul Abbott has penned a comedy police drama for Channel 4.

The award-winning writer recently called time on his long-running Channel 4 series Shameless about the dysfunctional residents of the Chatsworth estate.

His new drama No Offence will be set in a 'crumbling Victorian cop shop on the wrong side of Manchester'.

He said: "I'm a big fan of well-told cop shows and jet-black social comedy, and I wanted to see how explosively we could bang two genres' heads together. It's a tilted, hardcore blend of cop drama, family saga and social mayhem.'"

Channel 4 also announced a five-year partnership with Cancer Research UK for its fundraising event Stand Up To Cancer.

The event, hosted by Davina McCall, Alan Carr and Dr Christian Jessen featured the likes of Cheryl Cole and Kylie Minogue and raised £8 million for Cancer Research UK last year.

Channel 4 will also be tackling a 'political hot potato' in I Want A Council House, which will 'document the reality of life'' for people on the waiting list for social housing.

The programme will follow the day-to-day lives of the workers tasked with implementing the system and the stories of the people they deal with.

The broadcaster will also screen a factual series My Last Summer, in which five terminally ill strangers 'contemplate the reality of their own death'".

Commissioning editor Sara Ramsden said: "I believe our lives could be more fulfilled by bringing the understanding of our own mortality to centre stage."

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.