Gavin & Stacey: The Finale review: We’ll miss these characters – Oh my Christ, they were lush
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This Christmas special is about half an hour too long and the script recycles the least interesting elements of what’s gone before, but it still makes for lovely festive telly. I’m not gonna lie, this mega-hyped Christmas special contains lulls. Put another way, the middle section offers several fantastic opportunities for a nap. “The Finale” is 30 minutes longer (as well as more predictable) than the 2019 Christmas special, which ended with Nessa (Ruth Jones) going down on one knee to Smithy (James Corden). On the plus side, the cast are awesome and the third act everything it should be.
![[Rob Brydon as over-eager Uncle Bryn in ‘Gavin & Stacey’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/20/11/497097-%281%29.jpg)
The show’s creators and co-writers, Jones and Corden, have always kept things simple: ever since Gavin & Stacey first aired, 17 years ago, the Wests (Welsh) and the Shipmans (based in Billericay) have shared a fondness for piss-ups and impromptu sex. The problem with the script is that it recycles the least interesting elements of what’s gone before. Everyman couple, Gavin and Stacey (Mathew Horne and Joanna Page), are trying to spice up their love life, again. Smithy’s knocking boots with shallow Sonia (Laura Aikman), again. Though this time he’s determined to marry her, so he can enjoy “the most important day of my life” (his stag do, ho ho).
The stag do, as Smithy and Gavin agree, is awful. Unfortunately, it’s not enjoyably awful. There’s simply no tension. Even Rob Brydon, as over-eager Uncle Bryn, can’t make the clichéd lines sing, while the retro references (to TV shows such as Byker Grove) have zero oomph. As for Sonia’s hen night, to which Nessa is invited (one of many implausible details), it, too, feels numbingly familiar, with the Barry-Billericay gang always the ying to Sonia’s humourless, shrewish yang.
