The last time Gavin & Stacey was the centrepiece of the Christmas schedules, in 2019, 11.6 million people watched it, then annoyed each other for the rest of the night by shouting “Oh” and “What’s occurin’” in accents so far from Barry that search parties were sent out to find them. By the time catchup and streaming figures were included, that figure had grown to 17.1 million. Getting so many people to agree to watch anything together is now a feat so rare it’s usually reserved for football, royal weddings and lockdown announcements. But somehow, a comedy about a normal couple from different parts of the UK, and their slightly less ordinary family and friends, has become a momentous national occasion.
The last Christmas special bowed out with a cliffhanger, as Nessa told Smithy “I loves you, with all my heart,” then went down on one knee and proposed. Smithy’s shocked face, followed by a brutal cut to the credits, left everyone hanging. Now, five years later, at 9pm on Christmas Day, we will find out what he said. According to its writers and stars Ruth Jones and James Corden, this hour-and-a-half special really will be the last ever episode. In May, Corden shared a black-and-white photograph of him and Jones holding up the script, with “The Finale” very clearly right there in the title. (If that isn’t enough proof, on New Year’s Day BBC One is showing a documentary called A Fond Farewell, another title it will be hard to walk back.) “It’s all starting to get very emotional,” said Corden at the start of December.
How did Gavin & Stacey get here? In 2007, there was little sense that this sweet sitcom would go on to become one of the most beloved TV shows in British history, so popular that paparazzi photos of its cast filming unspecified scenes would count as legitimate news stories. It began on BBC Three, with the average audience for the first series under a million viewers. The second series was on BBC Two, and tucked a couple of Baftas under its belt. The first Christmas special arrived soon after on BBC One, and by the time the third and final series aired, in 2009, it was primetime festive smash material.
To get an idea of what makes Gavin & Stacey work, it is worth, perversely, having a look at the doomed American remake, Us & Them. It was such a disaster that in 2014, its US network chose not to air it, instead halting production and quietly canning the series. It did, however, get put online in 2018, and from the clips that have made it on to YouTube, you can see that it takes the basic premise of its parent show and gets everything about it completely wrong. In Us and Them’s understanding of the set-up, Gavin and Stacey are from different parts of the country and different social worlds; this leads to the sneering contempt of Gavin’s New York family, aimed at the hick-like naivety of Stacey’s Pennsylvania lot.
So what makes Gavin & Stacey work? First, it’s a comedy that is familiar, empathetic and full of heart. Watch the first episode again and you’ll see Gavin and Stacey, the Billericay and Barry ones, getting to know each other – younger readers may wish to look away now – over long conversations on the telephone. Its two lead characters, played by Mathew Horne and Joanna Page, are, deliberately, the least interesting part of the show. They are the straight man and straight woman around whom all the chaos can unfold. They fall in love, break up, get back together again, get married, move to Essex, move to Wales, have children, and largely get along very nicely indeed. If you’d like to feel old, then one of the teasers about the final episode is that they are trying to work out “how to spice up their 17-year marriage”.
It is tattooed goth Nessa (Jones) and tracksuit-loving builder Smithy (Corden) who are the real stars, always nudging their way to the front. Their relationship, which started with a one-night stand in episode one, has been on and off (mostly off) for the whole time Gavin and Stacey have been together. It seems fitting, then, that everyone is waiting to find out whether they finally make a go of it, rather than how their friends will get their spark back.
But Gavin & Stacey is an ensemble story, and it works because it is so well balanced. For all of the absurdities – or perhaps because of them – its family dynamics are recognisable and relatable. It is faintly nostalgic, and often unapologetically old-fashioned. Even in 2019, jokes about Des Lynam and Zammo from Grange Hill were hardly contemporary.
On the other hand, one of the misconceptions about Gavin & Stacey is that it is sentimental, even bland, but the comedy has always been much less cutesy than that. It can be surreal or naughty, or both, whether that’s the joy fans take in hearing neighbour Doris admit to Gwen that she’s “absolutely twatted”, or Dave Coaches explaining why you can smoke on Dave’s Coaches: “My motto is fags and weed, glue and speed, but I draws the line at crack. That way everyone knows where they stand.” If recent sitcoms occasionally seem uptight or mannered, this is sillier and much looser. It may have softened its gaze a little in recent years, but the families are still named after serial killers (Stacey West and Gavin Shipman), as are the Shipmans’ bickering neighbours Dawn and Pete Sutcliffe: “You’re unbelievable, you vicious little pig.”
Traditional TV viewing continues to fall off a cliff, with young people, in particular, choosing not to tune in at all. An Ofcom report this summer revealed that less than half of 16-24-year-olds watched traditional TV – live or catchup, but on the box – in an average week at all. Across all age ranges, audiences are declining, opting for their own choices within the isolation of phones or laptops.
Yet Gavin & Stacey can still reel us in. Alison Steadman, who has played Gavin’s mum Pam since the beginning, says she’s noticed how much young people love the show. “They stop me for selfies all the time,” she told the Radio Times, while young fans recreate clips on TikTok, or Smithy’s takeaway order goes viral again, decades after it first appeared. I am looking forward to joining millions of others in having a laugh on Christmas Day. Though I will say this: I might be in the minority, but I hope they never tell us what happened on that fishing trip. Some secrets should be sacred.
Gavin & Stacey: The Finale is on BBC One on Christmas Day at 9pm.
