Shameless: The Complete Series (US) [DVD]

Cast: William H. Macy, Emmy Rossum, Jeremy Allen White

Release Date: March 18, 2025

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 7.5/10

Synopsis:

Meet Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy): proud, working-class patriarch to a motley brood of six smart, spirited and independent kids who, without him, would be…better off. In Frank’s booze-addled view, parenting just eats into his hard-earned bar-crawling time around Chicago – so he leaves it to eldest daughter Fionna (Emmy Rossum) to hold down the fort. Bearing the de facto parent badge/burden, she’s donned the proverbial apron and makes sure her younger siblings do their chores, keep a clean-ish home, and everyone (no matter how small) works to keep the house lights on, as well as food on the table. Brothers Lip (Jeremy Allen White), Ian (Cameron Monaghan), and Carl (Ethan Cutkosky) use their intellect to break every rule in the book to survive and make the bank, while younger sister Debbie (Emma Kenney) would sooner steal her share, Toddle Liam, the youngest, is just happy to be along for the ride. The Gallaghers are irreverent, endearing, resilient – and they’re absolutely, wildly and unapologetically Shameless.

‘Shameless’ invites you to spend some time with The Gallaghers, the dysfunctional south side Chicago family that repeatedly finds themselves in one troubling, desperate or unexpected situation after another that often leads to hilariously unpleasant consequences. From absent alcoholic father Frank, mother-like eldest daughter Fiona and incredibly clever yet troubled oldest son Lip to the rest of the younger children including Ian, Carl, Debbie and Liam, along with their tight knit neighbors and friends Kev and Veronica, the series follows the family’s lives over the course of eleven seasons and now all of the twisted and offensive hilarity is available in one DVD collection.

‘Shameless’ is based on the UK series of the same name created by Paul Abbott, and the US series was developed for American television by John Wells. The show’s talented cast includes William H. Macy, Emmy Rossum, Jeremy Allen White, Cameron Monaghan, Emma Kenney, Ethan Cutkosky, Shanola Hampton, Steve Howey, along with Noel Fisher and special guest star Joan Cusack for multiple seasons, in addition to countless guest and recurring stars throughout the course of the long-running series, with the majority offering quite capable and solid performances as a whole.

‘Shameless’ is a wild, twisted, hilarious and occasionally touching look at a struggling family in Chicago that is just as outrageous and offensive as its title might suggest and with a marvelously talented cast to adequately back it all up. Featuring a colorful collection of unique characters that are anything but typical or generic, it does a fantastic job of giving each of the stars a chance to really shine along the course of the show’s impressive eleven-season run and even does a respectable job of taking multiple (or even most) key characters down some dark and troublesome paths at one point or another which only helps the viewer to really become familiar and connect with this family, even during the most trying of times which for the Gallaghers is often the farthest thing from rare. If you’ve never had the opportunity to give ‘Shameless’ a chance but typically enjoy a vulgar, offensive and pull no punches pitch black comedy that is both hilarious and unafraid to go to a great deal of surprising places, then this one should be right up your alley and I can’t encourage you strongly enough to check it out at your earliest convenience.

‘Shameless: The Complete Series’ brings all eleven seasons of the long-running Showtime series home in one convenient 34-disc DVD box set that delivers every offensive, twisted and hilarious moment at your fingertips. The box set repackages the previously released discs from the eleven individually released DVD season sets over the years inside 2 Epik pak like cases which themselves are packed inside a sturdy side-slip box that also includes an episode guide tucked beside the two cases, the only negative of course being that there are a number of double stacked discs as is often the case these days. While it probably won’t do much for those who have already collected the individual season releases during the show’s run, it does make a nice and cheaper way for those who don’t own the previous sets to pick up the entire series. If you don’t mind the DVD format in general and would like to physically own the series, then it’s definitely worth considering a purchase, especially if you can find it at the right price for your budget.

VIDEO:

The DVD release of ‘Shameless: The Complete Series’ features a 16×9 friendly standard definition video presentation utilizing the show’s original 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio on every episode of the series. The video presentations look very nice as a whole, especially within the limits of the aging DVD format and they each provide clean, sharp and capable video presentations from start to finish that are absent of any unexpected issues or faults to be found along the way. Detail is decent on characters, surroundings and everything else and each disc contains roughly four episodes to help avoid a massive decrease in quality. Overall, these are solid standard definition presentations that hold up well and look quite good for the DVD format.

AUDIO:

The DVD release includes a 384 Kbps 5.1 channel Dolby Digital soundtrack on every episode of each season in the series, with the exception of Season 9 which features 448kbps 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtracks on that season’s episodes alone. These multichannel soundtracks also do their job quite well and deliver clean, crisp and at times relatively immersive audio presentations throughout. They take advantage of all five available channels in order to send music, plus some background noise, crowd chatter and other tidbits throughout the various speakers when appropriate, and never resulting in any dialogue or other audio elements becoming negatively impacted in the process. Overall, these are fully capable 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtracks that may not be extraordinary but shouldn’t disappoint either.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The DVD release of ‘Shameless: The Complete Series’ includes a decent collection of previously released bonus content that was included on the individual season releases over the years including ‘Deleted Scenes’, ‘Featurettes’ and more. I’ve broken down the extras by season below for simplicity and easier navigation.

Season 1 includes ‘Audio Commentary on episodes 1 & 7’, in addition to ‘Deleted Scenes’ and the Behind the Scenes Featurettes ‘Bringing Shameless to America’ (running approximately 13 minutes in length), ‘Shameless: Bringing the FUN to dysfunctional’ (approximately 15 minutes), ‘A Shameless Discussion About Sex’ (13 minutes) and a ‘Season 2 Sneak Peek’ (5 minutes). Also included is an Easter Egg featuring an outtake.

Season 2 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’, plus the Featurettes ‘The Complicated Life of Fiona Gallagher’ (running approximately 7 minutes in length), ‘The Art of Acting Drunk’ (running approximately 7 minutes), ‘Writing the Shameless Version’ (19 minutes) plus ‘A Shameless Actor Discussion’ with various stars (approximately 37 minutes altogether) and ‘A Shameless Look at Season 3’ (4 minutes). A Music Video for ‘the Shameless Christmas Carol’ (4 minutes) is also included.

Season 3 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’, in addition to the Featurettes ‘Shameless: Where the Streets Have no Shame’ (running approximately 14 minutes in length), ‘An Officer and a Gallagher’ (running approximately 10 minutes), ‘The Many Sides of Sheila’ (approximately 10 minutes), ‘A Lip Off the Old Block’ (9 minutes), ‘Being Mandy and Mickey Milkovich’ (8 minutes) and ’A Messy Triangle: Lip, Karen and Mandy’ (4 minutes).

Season 4 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’, plus the Featurettes ‘Being Gallagher’ (running approximately 15 minutes) and ‘Shameless Neighbors’ (approximately 11 minutes).

Season 5 includes an ‘Audio Commentary on episode 7′, along with ‘Deleted Scenes’ and the Featurettes ‘Shameless Sex Love’ (running approximately 16 minutes) and ‘Gentrify This!!!’ (approximately 5 minutes).

Season 6 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’, in addition to the Featurettes ‘Shamelessly Shanola’ (running approximately 9 minutes) and ‘Running the Table: A Shameless Discussion’ (approximately 11 minutes).

Season 7 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’ and the Featurettes ‘Growing up Shameless’ (running approximately 14 minutes) and ‘The Shameless Politics of Frank’ (approximately 2 minutes).

Season 8 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’, along with the Featurettes ‘My Shameless Sister’ (approximately 5 minutes) and ‘My Shameless Mentors’ (approximately 8 minutes).

Season 9 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’.

Season 10 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’.

Season 11 includes ‘Deleted Scenes’ and ‘Shameless: Last Call’ (running approximately 63 minutes in length) which features interviews and insight from the cast and crew that aired alongside the series finale.

*Please note that the above images are taken from the DVDs and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this release are the property of their respective owners.

–

Disc Rating: 7.5/10

–

 ‘Shameless: The Complete Series’ is Now Available to Own on DVD from Warner Bros Discovery Home Entertainment

–

You can purchase ‘Shameless: The Complete Series’ on DVD at Amazon HERE!

*Screen-Connections.com is an Amazon Associate that earns from qualifying purchases