James Corden and Ruth Jones have written a final episode for Gavin And Stacey – a special Christmas edition.
A report earlier this year suggested that a Gavin And Stacey Christmas special was in the works, which Ruth Jones later denied. However, the BBC has now confirmed that Corden and Jones have written a Christmas special, which will also be the final episode.
No details about plot or cast have been revealed, but the series regulars, including Corden as Smithy, Jones as Nessa, Steadman as Pam, Brydon as Uncle Bryn, Davis as Dawn, Mathew Horne as Gavin, Joanna Page as Stacey, Melanie Walters as Gwen, Larry Lamb as Mick and Adrian Scarborough as Pete, are expected to return.
When Ruth Jones and James Corden brought Gavin And Stacey back for a Christmas special five years ago, around 18 million people tuned in. In modern TV terms, that’s an astonishing achievement.
It’s an auspicious place to be for a sitcom that started with little fanfare on BBC Three in 2007. Jones and Corden met while working on Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends in the early 2000s. Developing the idea together, they pitched it as a one-off play, but the BBC commissioned a full series.
Gavin and Stacey themselves were cast through auditions, but the majority of the parts were written for specific actors, such as Alison Steadman as Pam, with whom they worked on Fat Friends, and Rob Brydon as the excitable Uncle Bryn, who had been making a name for himself in British comedy with the wonderful Marion And Geoff and co-writing and starring with Julia Davis in the magnificent Human Remains. Davis also worked with Jones in her own, brilliant sitcom Nighty Night.
The show followed the romance of the titular characters, Gavin and his family in Billericay in Essex and Stacey and her family in Barry Island in Wales. The warmth permeating the sharp scripts soon won audiences over, and the show ran for three series and two Christmas specials from 2007 to 2019. In recent years, Corden became the host of The Late Late Show in the US, a role he recently quit so that he could to return to the UK. Jones, meanwhile, continued writing solo, producing six series of the comedy drama Stella for Sky One.
More news on this as we get it.
