It’s a rare thing, these days, for a show to occupy a sacred space in every family home. Gavin & Stacey is the series that turned Barry Island into a tourist destination, it’s the reason most people know all the words to Kanye West’s rap in ‘American Boy’, and it's the inspiration behind people dressing up as Nessa (Vanessa Shanessa Jenkins) for Halloween every year.
Most importantly, though, it’s become one of the most loved British sit-coms of the 21st century.
First gracing our screens in 2007, Gavin & Stacey ran for three seasons until 2010 when Smithy gallantly objected to Nessa, the mother of his child, marrying Dave Coaches. At that point, the co-creators James Corden and Ruth Jones, who play Smithy and Nessa, had no plans to revisit the series.
When they returned in 2019 with a Christmas special, which ended somewhat agonisingly with Nessa down on one knee before Smithy had a chance to answer, fans knew that there might be one final instalment in the locker.
They were right. On Christmas Day, the last ever episode of Gavin & Stacey (which is more like a film, coming in at 90 minutes) airs on BBC One. Corden and Jones first had a conversation about the finale in August 2023 and found they were in the exact same place: ready to tell the story one last time. ‘We were like, let’s get together and if there’s nothing there, if the characters don’t show us the story, then it doesn’t matter,’ Jones explains. ‘We haven’t told anybody, we haven’t told the cast, we haven’t spoken to the BBC.’
It wasn’t immediately straightforward (you'll see), but once the story came to them the rest fell swiftly into place. The same was true when the pair first sat down to write the show in 2004. ‘I don’t think we really knew what the show was when we wrote the first episode,’ Jones reveals. ‘We knew where we were going in terms of the narrative, that we were going to end episode six with a wedding, but I don’t think we really knew who the characters were. We sort of got to know them as we went along.’
It's hard to imagine a world without the Gavin & Stacey characters. The show is, after all, a sum of its parts. What makes it so special, and so re-watchable, is the work of great writers, a great production team and a truly exceptional ensemble cast. Pam (Alison Steadman), Mick (Larry Lamb), Gavin (Matthew Horne), Stacey (Joanna Page), Smithy, Nessa, Bryn (Rob Brydon), Gwen (Melanie Walters), Pete (Adrian Scarborough) and Dawn (Julia Davis) have inhabited characters that feel so real it’s easy to forget they’re not.
What unites them, aside from curry nights, dramatic weddings and long trips along the M4, is a ‘sense of love’, as Jones puts it. ‘I’m going to cry now,’ she says, ‘but what has remained throughout all the episodes is a love between friends and a love between family members. That lack of cynicism has remained the same – all the characters in the show really do love each other. Call it boring, but they do.’
It's a love that has retained viewers' loyalty for almost 20 years and makes the final episode appointment Christmas Day television. ‘The first Christmas special was just a dream come true for us,’ reflects Corden. ‘To have a show that was considered worth of a Christmas special. That was enough for us.’
This, then, is the Christmas specials of all Christmas specials. After a day of post-present passive aggression and too many potatoes, at least everyone will be able to agree on what to watch at 9pm.
Corden, for his part, thinks part of _Gavin & Stacey’_s legacy is a lesson in patience. ‘We’re sort of told now, particularly in television and the way we consume stuff, we talk about speed, and we’ve decided that speed is the single most important thing in everything that you can do. I ordered it then, and it arrived then. You get young people watching things at twice the speed that it was ever meant to be formatted.’
‘Here’s a show that ended 15 years ago,’ he continues, ‘waited 10 years to tell another hour of the story and waited five more years to end it. Maybe the lesson for people who write about television, for people who talk about television, for people who write television, is that time and patience and care might be the answer for things to have longevity.’
That, a brilliant premise and a consummate cast of comic actors – all of whom will be sorely missed.
Gavin & Stacey: The Finale is on BBC One at 9pm.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).