23.01.2025

Saved by the collective

Gavin and Stacey finally came to an end with a feature-length festive finale over Christmas. The sitcom attracted more viewers than Charles Windsor. Mike Belbin discusses a phenomenon

Over the Christmas period there was a cultural struggle on British TV - or, as the industry professionals call it, a ratings war.

One programme towered above all others with a recorded audience count of 12.3 million viewers, plus a further six million over the following week on ‘catch-up’. This was the finale of the BBC comedy drama series, Gavin and Stacey, attracting over five million more people than King Charles’s “message” to the UK and Commonwealth. G and S was also very much acclaimed on social media.

But if something was so popular, can we expect it to share our values, promoting a ‘politics’ - in the broadest terms, of course - that we can recognise and support? Please note that this article will discuss the ending of the final episode. If you have not seen this, you can access it via BBC iPlayer.

First made

Gavin and Stacey was first made in May 2007 by Baby Cow productions for BBC Cymru/Wales and aired on BBC Three. It was written by actors James Corden and Ruth Jones, who both worked on the ITV drama series Fat friends. Corden got the initial idea from a mate, also called Gavin, who met his wife following a phone call, after which the couple arranged to meet. The drama was originally offered as a short play It’s my day, but the BBC instead asked for a full series.

It ran for three seasons from 2007 to 2010, with Corden and Jones declining to produce any more. However, the show’s popularity had grown from the beginning and the writers and production company came up with a special for Christmas Day 2019.

By then both Corden and Jones had gone on to other projects, working on their own chat shows (Corden in the US). Though there were rumours of a further special in 2024, these were denied. However, as a safe popular attraction, these days of sequels and remakes, and a hanging story line, meant there was always a possibility of the show reappearing.

Gavin and Stacey is in fact the tale of two couples, along with their families and friends (one group in Barry Island, south Wales, the other in Billericay, Essex). To begin, Stacey West (Joanna Page) and Gavin Shipman (Mathew Horne) had six months of an ever-closer relationship conducted over the phone, often from the offices where they worked. Stacey, along with her friend, trucker and arcade supervisor Vanessa (or ‘Nessa’), played by Ruth Jones, travels from Barry to finally meet Gavin in Leicester Square, London. Gavin also brings his mate, a casual painter and decorator, Smithy (James Corden). The couples spend the night together and, while Gavin and Stacey hit it off right away, Nessa and Smithy, after the sex, do not seem to want to see each other ever again.

However, the families of Gavin and Stacey become involved with each other, including Stacey’s Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon) and Nessa’s ex, ‘Dave Coaches’ (Steffan Rhodri), who drives his own minibus on tours to London. Each series builds up our knowledge of the characters, who all have their ups and downs within the connected group. (This is a ‘family’ series, though not all of the characters are related by marriage or blood.)

The two couples themselves are a contrast. Gavin and Stacey have their rows, but it is obvious from the start they are passionately attached. Romantics may worry about their relationship, yet would probably have more doubt about any tie continuing between Nessa and Smithy. But then this may be the suspense. Can Nessa-Smithy survive with any degree of credibility? They just do not like each other (apart from the sex).

I have heard Nessa described as an obnoxious character, while, about Smithy, Gavin’s mum (played by Alison Steadman) observes that he is “not everyone’s idea of a catch”. However, neither of the two are cruel or snobbish, though mostly firm about what they dislike. The funniest characters are in fact Pam and Smithy, who are always chasing obsessions, while not quite sure about them. Pam pretends to be a vegetarian and Catholic, while Smithy is temporarily thrown by the sex that Nessa offers him that first night. Around them, other members of the group mostly prefer to get along with life as it is, often making the right choices or sometimes remembering their livelier past, like Nessa.

When Nessa becomes pregnant by yet another one-off with Smithy, they do both attempt to go their separate ways. Nessa partners up with Dave Coaches for a time and, at the start of this finale, Smithy is about to wed Sonia, his new link-up from London. Sonia (Laura Aikman) is effectively the outsider; she has to ask about the allusions and rituals of the group. We can empathise with this, but it is her attitude to her fiancé which may strike us as unsympathetic. She wants him to lose weight and does not seem to like his son much, nor his friends. The group, on the other hand, notice that Smithy is different when he is around her: he even sounds different. This can be thought of as progress, as ‘aspiration’ - consenting to be shaped by someone with your own best interest at heart. But it is Smithy, of course, who has to decide whether this is so.

Our values

The question of Nessa and Smithy is still hanging. In the Christmas special of 2019, Jones and Corden wrote an end to what they then presumed was the last episode, where Nessa confesses to loving Smithy and proposes with a ring. Smithy does not answer. Did Jones and Corden intend to take 2019’s proposal as a comment on romances that do not happen?

In 2024, however, Smithy is about to ‘go along with’ the marriage to Sonia. Various characters, like Pam and Stacey, raise the issue: is he compatible with Sonia? Meanwhile Nessa is setting off to leave the country on a boat. The person who most resists all these complaints is Gavin who believes Smithy is a grown man (they are all pretty mature by now) and so must make his own decisions. Of course, as the congregation assembles (with Anna Maxwell Martin as the ‘celebrant’ presiding over the ceremony), viewers may indeed be expecting the ‘interruption’ that often happens in such dramas. And it does occur - it is Gavin who finally gets up the courage to ask whether his mate really wants to go through with it. He is not bullying, but he is not fulfilling anybody’s idea of his easy-going nature.

Like the 1917 Russian Revolution or the Irish Rising of 1916, he is lighting a single spark. The celebrant wants confirmation of this and asks those assembled who do not believe these two should marry today to stand. One by one a majority of the group stand up (like so many rebels in the movie, Spartacus, but silent) - not to force Smithy into a decision, but to let him know he should answer the question for himself.

The bride, Sonia, has other ideas. She wants the ceremony to continue regardless, like coronations and royal openings of parliament. She tells Smithy that by marrying her they can finally get “this lot” out of their lives. “You said yourself,” she continues, “you were punching above your weight”. Smithy replies, “No, I don’t. You say that.” The tide is turned and Smithy declares that he does not think she loves him, nor does he love her. But there was someone he did and does. He hurries away, followed by Gavin and the group - they may just be able to catch Nessa at Southampton. To accomplish this they decide they must take Dave’s bus, now under the workers’ control, which means they can “take the bus lanes”.

When they reach Nessa, she still gets on the boat - it is a small tugboat. She refuses Smithy’s offer; she had previously asked him once and he rejected her. Firm as usual, whatever others think. Can Smithy’s entreaties persuade her? For finally he knows what he wants.

The next scene is them getting married elsewhere. It looks like a simple civil ceremony this time and both Smithy and Nessa are obviously glad to go along with it. The presiding official takes them all the way through and tells them they can conclude with the expected kiss. Both Nessa and Smithy say they won’t, because they never have before - that’s not what they do. Like so many others in our world, they choose their own ceremony, their own kind of relationship.

Is this such a big thing then? Even though it was the top-rated programme during the holiday, it may be just a bit of entertainment - a romantic comedy, family values, happy ending. Something to chuckle at rather than inspire. Why should anyone take it as more?

Over these 17 years there are issues that the series has not touched and tensions within the class it has not gone anywhere near. But what are the values that come out on top? Is it the gospel of individual improvement - become an entrepreneur, become Elon Musk? Or is it the need for solidarity and an opposition to going along with things as they are? The point of analysing popular culture is not just to point out how it too may be ‘turning right’ (as it has been doing from at least the 1980s), but to observe the possibilities of any actual work. Like CLR James did in his 1950 Notes on American civilisation on how Hollywood films then (the period of ‘film noir’ and James Stewart movies) sided with democracy against capitalism. If we do not notice what can be supported we may end up condemning the ‘masses’ without nuance (behaving like Theodor Adorno, who only approved of Samuel Beckett).

In Gavin and Stacey, the values that are promoted are the ones of comradeship, honesty and courage. At the climax of the first wedding Smithy was not bullied into rejecting his new ‘aspirational’ partner, but is asked to think again - by not only Gavin, courageous at last, but by the group that the bride demands he painfully reject. They then all take some form of public transport to ask the other person involved, Nessa. If Gavin and Stacey communicates anything, it is that you must not neglect any of your needs: that is, those not defined by our ‘get ahead at all costs’, ‘look good even if it hurts’ economy.

Affinity group

Smithy seems about to deny his need for companionship - both of a particular individual (yes, mainly sexual) and his affinity group (not just his own family or male mates). He does not really love Sonia, because she demands he reject these for something ‘better’.

Art like this may not convert anyone: you will not vote differently because you sat down to this, but if you have enjoyed the series, or even just this finale, and you agree with the values that win out, then it has reinforced one attitude in the battle of ideas. It is not gospel or a party programme, just as Bernard Shaw’s plays do not tell you how to build a socialist society or a welfare state. But the emphasis on choosing your own desires with the assistance of collective help and supportive action (what the caring group stands up for) obviously has a wide popular appeal.

At some point, we have to be interested in what most people think, such as, say, whether the working class would prefer to sacrifice the NHS to increased military spending. Fiction too can assist the struggle to define what sort of values our world needs.