Why saying goodbye to Gavin & Stacey is so bittersweet

The last time Gavin & Stacey got the gang back together, for a Christmas special in 2019 after the show had been off the air for nine years, half of Britain’s viewership (about 12 million people) tuned in to watch it. To say that doesn’t happen on live TV in the U.K. outside of a particularly big-deal, international football match might sound hyperbolic. But to be clear: That does not happen.  

So in that sense, one more episode of the James Corden and Ruth Jones-penned sitcom  feels predestined. (The engagement, dubbed Gavin & Stacey: The Finale, will be available on BBC iPlayer and BBC One on Christmas night in the U.K. In the States, BritBox will stream it starting December 26 and a documentary on the show come January 1.) There’s clearly an audience clamoring for more of the show and its very Christmastime-appropriate (and, in the case of the upcoming sendoff, Christmastime-set) warm vibes. And, besides, that surprise holiday one-off from five years back ended on quite the cliffhanger. (At this point, if you haven’t seen Gavin & Stacey, you should check it out on Peacock or BritBox and probably stop reading this.) But knowing this is the end is kind of bittersweet: It more than makes sense that it’s going away—in fact, it’s kind of incredible that fans can look forward to a new hour of the sweet, occasionally biting comedy some 17 after it started—but that doesn’t make it sting any less.  

I first heard about Gavin & Stacey from Steve Coogan. This was in 2008, and at that point in my life—hell, at this point in my life—I took anything he said as comedic gospel and basically unimpeachable, what with Alan Partridge and 24 Hour Party People and Saxondale and all the rest of it. The actor-writer’s production company, Baby Cow, was behind the show, and there were definite Coogan ingredients in the mix here: Jones, who also co-leads as Nessa, the best friend of Stacey (Joanna Page), played Coogan’s partner in Saxondale, a very funny shows about a fuck-the-system ex-roadie who drives a pest-control van in the suburbs; and Rob Brydon (Gavin & Stacey’s unequivocal MVP) sparred regularly with him in Michael Winterbottom’s Party People and A Cock And Bull Story (and would go on to do so, wonderfully, in the director’s 10-year project The Trip). 

But Gavin & Stacey isn’t really like any of the titles mentioned above: For one, it’s essentially a classic, sunny rom-com, following the titular couple (Stacey is from a working-class background in Barry, Wales; and Mathew Horne’s Gavin hails from a more upper-crust one in Essex, England) as they quickly fall in love and start a life together. (Gavin’s best friend, Smithy, is played by, yes, co-writer Corden.) For another, you wouldn’t mistake any of these characters, save perhaps Nessa (who’s slept with everyone from Dodi Fayed and Russell Brand to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and “two of Gladys Knight’s Pips”), as all that cool or even the kind of people who like to think of themselves as such (unlike, say, the out-of-time Tommy Saxondale). (You get the sense that The Libertines and The Fratellis, both of which provide needle drops on the show, are about as “indie” as these twentysomethings get, and Gavin and Smithy’s friend group is incredibly laddy.) What’s more, the show can stray into cheesy territory as it stages proposals and big wedding speeches and other tropes that come with the genre (although, more often than not, these moments—like that aforementioned Christmas-special cliffhanger—emotionally land).