Gavin And Stacey is back for a final, feature-length Christmas special. And here’s the trailer, which includes James Corden.
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.
Earlier this year, the BBC confirmed that Corden and Jones have written a Christmas special, which will also be the final episode. Christine Gernon returned to direct.
The synopsis reads as follows:
It’s five years since we left Nessa down on one knee declaring her love for Smithy and asking him to marry her. And a lot has happened in those five years.In Barry, Bryn’s packing the Picasso in readiness for a trip to Essex; Stacey and Gavin are looking for new ways to spice up their seventeen year marriage and Gwen is behaving most strangely. Nessa’s started a new business venture and Neil the Baby’s about to begin an apprenticeship with his dad.
Over in Billericay Pam is stressing out at the prospect of playing hostess, not helped by a newly retired Mick practicing his golf swings in the living room and there have been more ups and downs in Pete and Dawn’s relationship.Join us on the journey to Barry and Billericay as we catch up with the Shipmans and the Wests for the very last time and maybe find out what exactly did happen on that fishing trip.
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, Adrian Scarborough as Pete, Robert Wilfort as Jason and Steffan Rhodri as Dave, are all returning.
Gavin And Stacey has had an impressive run 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, and 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.
Gavin And Stacey: The Finale will air at 9pm on Christmas Day. You can watch the trailer on the BBC website. A behind the scenes documentary will also be broadcast.
