User reviews

First 3-4 seasons were great but as main characters started leaving the show and new additions weren't able to fill their gap, the show quickly turned from Gallagher story to Macguire story where Gallaghers became side characters in a show where they started out as main characters.

Also, the first 3-4 seasons were really funny but the show turns into a drama show after 5th season and jokes became rarer and rarer while sad/tearful moments take bigger and bigger chunk of each episode. The first several seasons were a good mix between comedy and drama but later seasons completely lost the comedic aspect and characters became increasingly dry and boring.

This is what happens to a show where all main characters leave the show one after another and they get replaced by dry boring characters that fail to replace them.

Well, we are most of the way through the second series and unfortunately I cannot help but feel it has lost some of it's edge. This is probably down to the loss of James McAvoy who played Steve as I would quite often wonder what he would be getting up to in the next episode, but don't get me wrong, this was only one of the aspects of waiting for the next episode, and lets face facts, if i am waiting for the next episode then it must still be good.

Above all I must say that this is well played out by all of the actors including the younger ones and the writing always gives a refreshing if skewed point of view of life on the 'inner estate' side of life.

I hope series three is well into the planning stage and that we see a few more of the "What the (insert personal choice of profanity here) are they up to now" moments some of us really enjoy.

Altogether, one of the better series from 2004 (The first series) and still enjoyable now in the second series in 2005.