Shane (partially found ITV sitcom; 2004)

Title card for the series.

Status: Partially Lost

Shane was an ITV sitcom created by British comedian Frank Skinner, broadcast for one series in 2004.

Background

Skinner wrote and starred in the series, as the titular character of Shane, a disaffected, middle-aged taxi driver. The cast also included his wife, Myrtle, and children Velma and Lenny. The two other main characters were Bazza, Shane's best friend and boss, and Sheila, a barmaid at Shane's local pub.

The series was broadcast between the 21st April and 19th May 2004, and was met to highly negative reviews from the press. Despite this, ITV did commission a second series, presumably to be aired in 2005. The series was written and filmed, but after filming had wrapped, unspecified issues arose between Skinner and ITV, leading to the second series never airing, despite being completed.

Availability

Recordings of the series were extremely rare for several years after Shane's original airing, as there was no DVD release, and the series has never been made available on any streaming services. It wasn't until 2013 that all 7 episodes of the first series appeared on YouTube, courtesy of the user LovecraftComedy, who had apparently recorded all episodes to VHS at the time of broadcast. The second series of the show, however, is completely missing, with little information known about its content. According to some online commentators, the second series did air (albeit in a late-night, graveyard slot) on the Paramount Comedy channel in the UK (now Comedy Central UK) around 2005, but no recordings of this have ever surfaced.

Found Episodes

#	Series	Air Date	Status
1	1	21st April 2004	Found
2	1	28th April 2004	Found
3	1	5th May 2004	Found
4	1	10th May 2004	Found
5	1	17th May 2004	Found
6	1	18th May 2004	Found
7	1	19th May 2004	Found