Production is reportedly about to begin on a Christmas special of Gavin And Stacey, with Ruth Jones and James Corden said to be making a 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.
According to Deadline, pre-production work is now underway on a new Christmas special, once again written by co-writers and stars James Corden and Ruth Jones. The majority of the main cast, which includes Corden as Smithy, Jones as Nessa, Alison Steadman as Pam, Rob 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.
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.
No plot details have yet been confirmed for the new special, nor have the BBC commented on the story. It is expected to address the cliffhanger which ended the 2019 Christmas Special, in which Nessa asked Smithy to marry her.
We’ll keep you updated as we hear more.
