Gavin And Stacey series 3 episode 2 review

A more satisying episode than last week's, as Gavin and Stacey sit back for a curry...

A top-notch Gavin & Stacey episode is a beautiful thing. It bathes you in a warm glow, thanks to its lovingly rendered quirks of family life - having a "messy drawer" or making an omelette with yesterday's beef - even as it folds you up with laughter. Tonight's plot is nothing fancy. There always needs to be an excuse to bring the Barry Island folk and the Billericayites together, and in this case it's a gathering planned at Mick and Pam's for a golf and spa weekend (for which we welcome back the beloved/dreadful Pete and Dawn). But before that gets going there's a Friday-night curry, the ordering of which takes about half the episode ("Gav - will you laugh at me if I have a korma?" etc). It's not just a nice riff on a modern ritual, it turns out to be about something else - why Nessa and Smithy belong together. Along the way there's a fine scene where Bryn puts on a fake job interview for Stacey, a hilarious passing reference to John Nettles, and Smithy's loving re-creation of a Kanye West rap, performed with his sister in a car park - and down the phone to Gavlahh. It's brilliant.

One of the sweet things about this series is how conventional Gavin and Stacey actually are. Last week, they decided to try for a baby, so by golly this week, that's what they're going to do - even if their friends and family keep getting in the way.

Just the simple act of ordering an Indian takeaway - as the Shipmans are trying to do tonight - can turn into a three-ring circus with this lot. They're not so much a family, as a herd, constantly migrating from one end of the M4 to the other.

While Nessa and Bryn steal the show again, this week with a fortune-telling business and a job interview respectively, tonight's other YouTube-worthy highlight sees Smithy and Rudi duetting on American Boy. You would be looking at James Corden a long time before you spotted any similarity between him and Kanye West but this duo should consider joining Pam on her Britain's Got Talent quest. And expect one more big development before the night is out.

Gavin and Stacey: series three, episode two

Trying for a baby, trying for a job - and trials for Dave Coaches.

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.

For all its BAFTAs, series three of Gavin & Stacey was about as fresh or contemporary as Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. Sadly, it's all become a bit twee and stagey.

It began with Gavin starting his first day at work - an occasion that necessitated every other character to ring him up. "Hiya it's me, it's Stacey," announced Stacey - the Betty Spencer of the piece. "I know," grinned Gav, virtually rolling his eyes to camera. Mugging furiously, Rob Brydon (Bryn) even turned up to bring him a packed lunch!

James Corden meanwhile went into squealing pig mode, over-acting his socks off.
"I don't know who he is anymore! He's changed!" Smithy moaned preposterously. With Gavin & Stacey reduced to caricatures, this series should be called Dave & Ness who remained a masterclass in understatement. The baby was christened "Neil Noel Edmond Smith." The days when the vicar is due and the turkey isn't defrosted can't be far away.

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.

Gavin & Stacey are back for what they say will be the final series of this immensely well-written and properly amusing sitcom. The unamusing truth about comedies is that they generally die half a dozen episodes before keeling over, and Gavin & Stacey is a dead sitcom walking. Everybody has that distracted look of actors in the middle of contract negotiations, talking to their agent between takes.

This series has made a handful of them stars, but the drive and the energy are dissipated. In place of sharp observation and dialogue based on a handful of cleverly defined and delivered characters, we're left with lazy ciphers who have fallen heavily back on the sofa of cliché and the scatter cushions of repetition. The easy yuk-yuks are predictable. Nobody means it any more or even really cares. Nobody's listening.

This doesn't detract from the brilliance of the original scripts and production, but it is a salutary example of how slight is the distance between brilliance and mediocrity. Television is such an intimate medium that it can't paper its cracks with special effects or money. It relies on the belief and commitment of performers. The audience can instinctively tell when they've lost concen­tration, when it's being phoned in. So it's interesting to see Gavin & Stacey, the third series - interesting, but not very funny.

All the same, I was interested to see whether the gentle BBC series, which returned last week for a third and final series, would have shed a little fairy dust in the aftermath of the lamentable solo efforts of James Corden and Mathew Horne. It didn't take long, however, to be reminded that neither actor has ever been a main draw among the superlative cast (though credit goes to Corden as co-writer). The action has shifted to Barry Island, which will please fans of Ruth Jones's brilliantly deadpan Nessa and Rob Brydon's Uncle Bryn - a caricature, but an excellent one.

The christening of Nessa and Smithy's son provides the excuse to lure the Essex contingent over the border, and the seeds are planted early for what promises to be a warm and fuzzy finale. No surprises perhaps, but for the home straight, I'm perfectly happy with more of the same.

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