James Corden and Ruth Jones win another deserved award (Image: Getty)
Hallelujah! The BBC finally got Christmas right. The Gavin & Stacey finale had everything we want from festive comedy – laughs, love, tears, warmth, tension, hope, heart and an uplifting ending.
It started with some classic misdirection. “It’s a wedding, Gav, a wedding,” exclaimed Smithy who was gearing up for his stag do.
As Nessie had proposed to him at the 2019 episode’s cliffhanger ending, you assumed they would be tying the knot. But no. Smithy was blundering into a soul-sapping marriage with snobby Sonia (Laura Aikman), who snubbed his friends and would have sucked the spirit right out of him.
“You said yourself everyone tells you you’re punching above your weight,” the Essex bridezilla hissed as their wedding ceremony disintegrated.
“I don’t say that – you do,” Smithy replied.
Best pal Gavin and his parents helped the scales fall from his eyes. Pam got up first to tell him, “I think you’re making a big mistake”.
Others followed but Mick, his surrogate dad, remained seated. “Mick?” asked Smithy poignantly and then he too rose up and clinched it.
The 90-minute episode tied up all the show’s loose ends except for the unexplained mystery of Uncle Bryn’s fishing trip. There were joys galore – the drinking scenes, corn-on-the-cob sexual tension, Mick’s stag do speech, Dawn and Pete’s booze-fuelled reunion, Neil the Baby’s touching rendition of Paul McCartney’s Blackbird…
There was scandal – Gwen’s fling with Dave Coaches, Dawn and ‘Chinese’ Al “in the car-wash next to Dominos”; there was jeopardy – could Smithy get to Southampton docks before Nessa sailed? Could he win her back?
Good jokes too – Nessa simultaneously vaping and smoking, her Bluetooth bra, Nessa on her rickshaw asking Stacey “You want music?” and then playing the same two notes repeatedly on her harmonica…
Like the Trotters and the Royles, Gavin & Stacey grew from a comedy to a cultural treasure. Well done to writers James ‘Smithy’ Corden and Ruth ‘Nessa’ Jones for pulling off a Christmas miracle.
Now the bad news. This success raises a big question: what else have Comedy got?
They have no current sitcoms capable of filling the gap next year, and they won’t have as long as their hopeless commissioners are obsessed with box-ticking and minority humour. They might have fine university degrees but in terms of what makes most of us laugh they are more out of touch than Silent Hill’s armless men.
It was traditional Christmas misery on ho-ho-hopeless . Sinful Cindy had betrayed Ian Beale (again). When her ex, George Knight, turned her down, she’d bedded his son, Junior instead. Pill-popping Lauren revealed their fervid fling via the gift of a USB stick for Ian to play during the Queen Vic karaoke night (clumsily echoing the way Sharon’s affair with Phil was broadcast over a baby listening device).
Then someone left Cindy for dead. Glad tidings of comfort and joy! Like Dirty Den, if she pops her clegs it’ll be her second death in the soap. It’s certainly the second time Lauren has outed a love rat on Xmas Day.
Once admired for its realism, ’Enders now relies on resurrecting characters (including Kath of Kath’s caff) and recycling yesterday’s gloom. It’s about as real as Walford’s fake snow.
Poor Ian. When it comes to women, the poor chap is thicker than Cliff Richard’s Xmas gravy. But what did he expect? Cindy previously slept with his two half-brothers, tried to kill him, and kidnapped their kids.
Which just goes to show how much the writers hate small businessmen.
There are too many over-stretched, underwritten soaps on TV and nowhere near enough laughs.
Don’t miss…
Doctor Who was just as frustrating. Disney money has jazzed it up – loved the T-Rex – but the scripts stink like a decaying Sauropod.
The show’s writers (in this case Steven Moffat) enjoy ladling in political messages but genuine tension and convincing sci-fi plots are beyond them.
Here, Villengard, a faceless weapons manufacturing company who were more evil than Putin’s to-do list, were attempting to build a star with “star seeds”.
Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that stars don’t grow from seeds, stellar formation takes millions of years, so the episode took place in a Time Hotel, available to the public on just one day a year via that door in every hotel room that’s always locked.
The Doctor, a Time Lord with a Tardis, had to spend an entire year in a hotel waiting for the day to come around. Eh? And humans were “absorbed” into the new star, rather than incinerated. Yes…
Ncuti Gatwa has the charisma of a hundred chorus girls but he’s let down constantly by the scripts.
Nice moments included Nicola Coughlan’s Joy becoming the star that hovered over Bethlehem when Jesus was born – Joy to the world, indeed.
There was baloney about a briefcase that handcuffed itself to people’s wrists, a dig at Partygate , , a lovesick lesbian on the Orient Express, and time was squandered on the Doctor’s loneliness. Ho hum.
It’s become a badly-written children’s show with pretensions, and no decent stories to tell.
Here’s a novel idea. Recruit genuine sci-fi writers to give us stories with proper villains, scary aliens, and plots kids can follow.
Historically the Daleks were based on the Nazis and the Cybermen were a riff on Communism. Nobody would argue there are no contemporary geopolitical villains to inspire similar chilling creations.
Small joys of festive telly: The Chase: Celebrity Special… Andre Rieu: Christmas In London… The Piano at Christmas… Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl…Iron Bibby, World’s Strongest Man.