Gavin & Stacey: A Special Christmas review

The Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special is full of love and laughs, and leaves room for another return visit to Barry Island. Spoilers ahead...

Tonight's episode of this quietly subversive comedy about a dysfunctional Jewish family, in which the comedian Simon Amstell plays himself, is the best so far. Cantankerous Grandpa (Geoffrey Hutchings) invites round ebullient local drama teacher Deborah (Pam Ferris). There's a winning performance from Jamal Hadjkura as unlikely teenage rebel Adam. Accusations that he's impregnated a classmate provoke a hilariously unsavoury response.

How did they know the number? Within 11 minutes of Gavin settling into his new office in Wales, his family and friends were all ringing him on his work phone to find out how he was doing. Did he send them a text containing his extension - before he even knew how to work his office phone? Was it a round-robin e-mail? I mean, we all do it before starting a new job - send our family and friends the number. Or perhaps they looked up the switchboard number of the firm in the Yellow Pages and called there. I mean, there's no way they'd use his mobile phone number. The cost of calling some networks can be prohibitive.

Obviously, this was part joke/part characterisation. They're worried about him! They're making things worse! And really, it shouldn't be over-analysed because at least it was a joke, even if it didn't work. We should be grateful for its presence because Gavin And Stacey doesn't usually bother with jokes. As every newspaper will tell you, Gavin And Stacey is warm. (Warm is defined as 'a mawkish soap-opera similar in style to late series of Only Fools And Horses'.)

It's true that the rest of the show was searingly original - a swearing granny, the robot dance, Sheridan Smith as a young ******* and James Corden's heroic attempt to maintain his position as the most punchable face on television.

By tvBite's reckoning, there were three and a half jokes in the first episode. None of them were funny. None of them worked on their own terms (Gavin's phone number, how did Nessa only hear her baby through a monitor when it was on the other side of the bed?).

Still, there are unbelievable things that happen in real life. Who'd laugh at a show with no jokes, patronising characters (Yes, they ARE. Look at Pam Ferris and Nessa's fiance) and James Corden? What kind of world would shower this show with awards and claim it was well-written? It's total fantasy.

The BBC's hit comedy Gavin & Stacey was back with its winning formula of gooey romance, slapstick angst and recurring logistical challenge of getting a vast ensemble of Essex and Welsh people into the same room without it seeming odd. Perhaps that's its genius. This week they solved it with a christening party, adding yet more characters. Here was Nessa's dad and Smithy's mother (Pam Ferris, looking like she'd slept in a skip), and Ewan Kennedy was cracking as the new baby, Neil - strapped facing outwards on Nessa's back. "That's so I can smoke," she drawled.

The Welsh steal this show, led by Ruth Jones as Nessa - gnomic, brusque, experienced - alongside her spiritual opposite, Bryn (Rob Brydon), garrulous, sentimental and unworldly. I don't know about the Billericay element. Alison Steadman is a bit of a pantomime grotesque as Gavin's mum, and Smithy's Byronic laments for Gav - now installed in his new job in Cardiff - are fast losing their charm. I'm all in favour of a man expressing his feelings but if Smithy were my best mate I think I'd have to move farther than Wales.

Legend has it James Corden and Ruth Jones thought long and hard about the whys and wherefores and the what's occurrings involved in a third series of Gavin & Stacey (BBC1). As it stood, they had two perfectly formed series and one special, so cult status was assured. Stretch it out and the danger was it could all go a bit My Family. So it was a relief to find that, at least in parts, the charms of G&S - not just a sitcom, but an Anglo-Welsh melange of social integration, drizzled with dollops of juicy profanity - were still cooking with gas. With Gavin relocated to Wales for work, there was scope for surreal culture shock.

When a new colleague introduced himself with the words: 'My name is Owain Hughes. And before you ask, no I don't,' you shared his fish-out-ofwater befuddlement - unless you were Uncle Bryn, in which case you found it hilarious. It must be a Welsh thing. The story picked up with the christening of Nessa and Smithy's baby, an ideal excuse to throw the two halves of the G&S extended family together. And that was where the niggles started: when you wanted to get reacquainted with the principal players, the focus kept shifting to a ragbag of minor characters who were little more than sitcom sketches. Bringing in Nessa's dad and Smithy's mum (Pam Ferris) over-egged a pudding already threatening to collapse under the weight of its wacky ingredients. The best of Gavin & Stacey is in the little details, the laugh or cry moments. But at times here, the comedy was drawn with a broader brush, built around a succession of conventions written in the sitcom rulebook. Funny, es, but more like a succession of g ags and comedy observations than the flesh and blood reality it felt like before. Which inspired mixed feelings - it's undoubtedly good to have Gavin & Stacey back but, on this evidence, it's going to be a little easier to say hello and wave goodbye than you might have thought.

It's gone from the BBC Three backwater to official National Treasure status in a couple of years, and its popularity even seems to have survived the abomination that was Horne & Corden. Now Gavin & Stacey returns for its third and final series. The first series saw the titular couple fall in love and get married, the second followed them having marital troubles so where next? This being the end I'm assuming there'll be a sprog by the end of the series to add to Nessa's gloriously named Neil Noel Edmond.

What we do know is that after last year's Christmas Special Gavin has taken a job in Cardiff so Gwen has plenty of people to make omelettes for, while Pam has an empty nest. Smithy's still not happy about his son getting a new dad in the form of Dave Coaches, and Uncle Bryn continues to be Uncle Bryn. And hopefully there'll be plenty of the real star of the show, namely Doris. Russell Tovey is due to make his annual cameo as Budgie later in the run, and rather excitingly Pam Ferris joins the cast as Smithy's mum (I'm kinda hoping she, like the rest of her family, is also called Smithy.) Enjoy it 'cause there's only six weeks of it left. Unless there's a Doris spin-off. Actually come on, somebody MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

Pam Ferris to star in Gavin & Stacey

Comedy legend Pam Ferris will soon be larkin' around in Gavin & Stacey - as Smithy's mum Kath.