I saw the final (but is it?) episode of Gavin & Stacey a few days before most at a star strewn screening in a flashy London hotel where the feeling in the auditorium was one of extreme, almost bullying, good will towards Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon) and co. So much clapping and whooping! And so much pressure to cry! In front of me, the actor Russell Tovey rose to his feet in seeming ecstasy as the titles rolled – at which point, I worried that a failure publicly to profess undying adoration for Ruth Jones and James Corden’s comedy soap of a show had, unbeknownst to me, been suddenly declared illegal by a desperate Labour government.
Personally, I can never decide quite what I feel about it. When does a (welcome) lack of cynicism shade into outright sentimentality? In this finale, all the stops pulled out, there were moments when its sweetness fairly made the teeth ache; I’ve known sticks of rock more savoury. But as ever, it was also edged with strangeness, even menace, and somehow this gave the soppiness a pass. Listening to Bryn shouting at Gwen (Melanie Walters) as they struggled to secure a suitcase to the top of his Renault Picasso, I remembered all over again how much his character reminds me of slightly creepy men I encountered as a child. Sweet, he is not. Equally, if Pam (Alison Steadman) and Mick (Larry Lamb) have long since turned into caricatures of themselves, a couple of pink sugared almonds, Dawn (Julia Davis) and Pete (Adrian Scarborough) are inkier than ever, two sadomasochists in search of a safe word.
How to get the old gang together? Its writers – Jones and Corden – have admitted to a struggle over this, Gavin (Matthew Horne) having permanently swapped Billericay for Barry, where he lives with Stacey (Joanna Page). In the end, perhaps predictably, they came up with that classic of the romcom: a wedding. Smithy (Corden) was to marry Sonia (Laura Aikman) back in Essex, and thus his best man Gavin would attend his stag, while for reasons mostly to do with plot, Stacey, Pam and even Nessa (Jones) would attend the hen. Bryn would be the Barry contingent’s designated driver, as well as the crazed caretaker of a plunger and an inflatable doll (again, creepy). Even Dave Coaches (Steffan Rhodri) would appear, though viewing habits being what they are, I won’t say how or why (maybe your appointment with G&S and a bowl of turkey korma is still in the future). And no, neither will I reveal what’s occurring between Nessa and Smithy (the last time 18.4m of us saw them in 2019, Nessa had just proposed to Smithy on one knee).
When Gavin & Stacey is funny, which it is often, the laughs inevitably reside in the highly particular. Nessa’s weekend kit comprises “HRT, feminine wipes, Tic Tacs”. Mick appears at the stop of the stairs in a certain kind of shortie dressing gown (you need to be of a certain age to get those Hai Karate top notes). Pam is envious of Smithy, who’s eaten at a new place in Billericay called Meze Mansion (tzatziki is to Gavin & Stacey what cheese and pineapple was to Abigail’s Party). One of Smithy’s stags refuses to go paintballing because that was how PJ out of Byker Grove went blind.
As for Nessa’s fantastical monologues, they’re better (and odder) than ever. Her stories of, say, renting a room from Hale and Pace (a crap 1980s comedy double act) delivered in the kind of deep, dramatic, utterly serious monotone others might use to read from the Four Quartets. These layers – explaining them on the page – doubtless kills them dead, but on screen, every line has a metronomic richness, every word born only of place and character.
At the screening, Jones and Corden, whose voices kept breaking, talked of the long wait for this reprise. Corden said the five year gap spoke not only of their determination to write another episode only if the material flowed naturally, but that some things cannot, and must not, be rushed. Ultimately, it was all a bit mushy. But I loved it, feeling grateful for the generosity its writers showed in not depriving us of anything (again, I won’t say more).
And when I watched it again on Christmas night, stuffed full of parsnips and orange Matchsticks – Pam probably serves the latter in a silver dish – it seemed, if anything, even more right: a Just So show. Its characters love each other and want the best for each other, and their kindness sends you up to bed in a state of momentary forgetfulness. The Gavin & Stacey multiverse strongly suggests that our own world may not, after all, be quite as awful as it seems.
[See also: When Christmas and Chanukah collide]
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