This is it, then. After decades of waiting, three series and several specials, it looks like Gavin and Stacey is really coming to an end with one final hurrah on Christmas day.
I’m awaiting this last episode with a mixture of excitement and sadness. It looks like I’m not the only one, either. In a recent interview with Radio Times, Joanna Page confessed that “I would love to come back every year, but I genuinely don’t think there will ever be any more and I can really see why.”
That doesn’t mean we don’t want more. Or that we couldn’t happily watch four hours of Bryn pottering around a house, or Nessa conducting minor scams with Neil the baby. On a recent trip to Cardiff, I went to the sitting room in my lounge – only to overhear the cleaners cheerfully discussing the finale. “What do you think’s going to happen, then?” one called as I stood by the coffee machine, ears twitching.
“Well, Nessa has to marry Smithy, doesn’t she?”
The whole country is obsessed with this show. The 2019 Christmas special drew 11.6 million viewers when it aired on Christmas Day, and by the new year, had been seen by 17.1 million. Expect the stats this time around to equal, if not exceed that: this is appointment TV, of the sort that is rarely seen these days.
Why? Part of the joy is in the mundanity of it. Nothing important ever happens in Gavin and Stacey; the scenarios the characters find themselves in are ones that we can all relate to. Gavin does… something in telecoms? Stacey does… well, I’m not entirely sure what she does.
But that doesn’t matter, because what the show does so well is mine that mundanity, and the relationships between the characters, for comedy gold. Who doesn’t have an eccentric relative, or an annoying friend? Who hasn’t done something stupid, like had a one night stand they regretted – or indeed slept with John Prescott (okay, maybe not that one)?
The show holds a microscope up to their relationships, and by extension, ours too. The drama is small-scale, the atmosphere is cosy and the characters all feel like people you could spend a few hours down the pub with, sinking pints and swapping stories. Its narrative threads – marriage, blind dates, meeting the in-laws and messy relationships – are ones we can all relate to, even if the zingers the characters come up with are slightly better than ones we could come up with ourselves.
Gavin and Stacey also paired that razor-sharp observational comedy with dynamite casting. Joanna Page and Matthew Horne were hired on the strength of their chemistry alone; the characters of Bryn and Pam were written with Rob Brydon and Alison Steadman in mind.
And of course, Jones and Corden steal the show as the on-again, off-again Smithy and Nessa, whose relationship is the one we really care about. The characters are all well-written: even characters like Pam, who could easily have been wasted, are turned into fan favourites. And what about Doris, who appears for about 10 minutes and yet manages to run away with the show, thanks to her penchant for 20-year-old boyfriends and liberal use of middle fingers (there’s the salad!”)
But Nessa and Smithy are surely the best of all. On the one hand, there’s the brash Smithy, who veers between weeping from his love for Gavin and delivering big emotional beats along with waking up in the bath before a plumbing job. On the other, there’s Nessa, whose list of bizarre jobs (palm-reading, anybody?) and in-jokes get longer and longer as the series goes on.
Naturally, it took off, and fast. When the show aired all the way back in 2007, it was on BBC Three: the home of humble small-batch shows. The BBC took a chance on James Corden and Ruth Jones’ pitch, and it paid off: before the run was even over, the show had been moved to BBC One as its popularity mushroomed.
And perhaps part of the enjoyment was knowing that the show was never going to run for long. As far back as season two, Jones and Corden told the Guardian that they weren’t sure if they wanted to write a third season.
"We don't want it to become predictable. We will see how the Christmas special goes and take it from there,” Jones said, while Corden added that they would “write one if we can make it better. We have to be true to ourselves."
Both times, they did: a third season was produced, then a one-off Christmas special (also billed as the last) which ended on a frankly cruel cliffhanger. And one last time, the pair appear to have caved to public demand and written out one last hurrah (which they’re adamant is now the finale, promise) for their beloved characters to bow out on.
I can’t remember the first time I watched Gavin and Stacey – the show has become so ingrained in my family’s collective consciousness it sometimes seems we were born watching it. And on some channels in the lower reaches of the TV guide it seems to run on a permanent loop.
I was brought up in Wales, where quoting Gavin and Stacey sometimes felt like a second national language: not a surprise when you consider how few mainstream shows there were championing Welsh culture and people at the time. Quotes abounded: Nessa’s bellowed “Oh!”, or Smithy’s curry order (that’s a chicken bhuna, lamb bhuna, prawn bhuna, mushroom rice, bag of chips, keema naan and nine poppadom in case you were curious).
As I grew older and left for uni, Gavin and Stacey became one of things I watched when I was homesick. I started going out with a guy from Essex – when we moved to London, he celebrated Valentine’s Day by submitting a paragraph in Metro’s Rush Hour Crush that read ‘Will you be the Stacey to my Gavin?’
Horrendously cringe mementos aside (though I’m sure every Welsh/English couple has had Gavin and Stacey quoted to them at some point), this is a show that has stood the test of time. The jokes, now as well-worn as a pair of old shoes, still hit; it’s still possible to catch something on the fourth or fifth go around that you didn’t get the first or second.
So pour yourself a pint on Christmas Day, settle back and let the credits roll one last time. The show might be over, but it’ll live forever in our hearts.
Gavin and Stacey: The Finale will air on BBC One on Christmas Day
