Gavin and Stacey to return again with another Christmas special

[lankyguy95]

i once had a cyst tract

I cynically decided that they probably aren't the path to eternal reward.

[dissolute ocelot]

She's appearing in Sister Act at the moment. Are you suggesting appearing in the Sister Act musical isn't acting?!

Obvs not updating her Wikipedia. Casting her as a wacky fake nun is so obvious I should probably have searched specially for that.

[Mr Trumpet]

I assumed she'd be in the Kathy Najimy role, but actually she's playing Maggie Smith(y)'s part

[neveragain]

Ruth Jones seems to have almost given up acting.

She made a one-off comedy/drama thing with Rob Brydon, called Barry And Kath or something, scheduled (I think) for last Christmas but postponed so God knows when we'll see that.

[H-O-W-L]

I always felt the first series had a weird patina of Nighty Night inspiration that disappeared very quickly but hung around like an unusual odor.

[Catalogue Trousers]

this'll be shit i reckon

if it even happens

[BritishHobo]

I always felt the first series had a weird patina of Nighty Night inspiration that disappeared very quickly but hung around like an unusual odor.

I've just finished the first series, and I was thinking it has a strange dark vibe to it, even outside of the edgy humour. Things like the fishing trip later crystallise into a running joke where they're treated with more wackiness, but here they hang like bits of genuinely upsetting backstory. Smithy hasn't become the food-hoovering lad-bants Red Nose Day character he later will, and instead is a horrible cunt who repeatedly shows a real spite towards Gavin for being happy. Dawn and Pete, who later become comedy characters, are really bleak here. And in the last episode - where Gavin and Stacey get married but have a genuinely awkward fight over how often they'll be travelling to Wales - it's like Dawn and Pete are a glimpse at who their future selves will be. It really doesn't feel like a happy or romantic ending at all. It seems like it was written more as a raw take on the bleaker underside of a two families going through the rituals of a couple getting married.

[Captain Z]

I can't really articulate my thoughts about this show now; I had to read some of the older threads for catharsis the other day. I initially liked it upon discovering it part way through series 2, and there are several funny moments that still stick in my mind (Bryn's "SURPRISE!", " what time's the EastEnders special on?", Matt Lucas) before it rapidly went downhill in series 3. I'd have to literally steal someone else's words in that it's often quite well-observed, but almost everybody in it is not very likeable. Gavin and Stacey especially, who's grand romantic moments have the hallmarks of an ultimately doomed relationship rather than two people meant to be together.

It feels really dated to me now, much worse than other sitcoms of the time or older. Obviously the soundtrack amplifies that, but a lot of the attitudes and cultural touchstones feel like they all went very out of date within the following few years. For example, proposing and a big grand wedding just being 'the done thing', lads nights out to the big provincial club throwing as many shots down you as possible, Pam's middle-class snobbery, Nuts Magazine... not saying these things don't still happen but these people's lives ultimately feel quite dull, and if there's an upside to the bleak outlook of today perhaps it's that people are questioning their happiness and life choices a bit more. This is reflected in much more accurate and touching portrayals of young life/love/family such as Big Boys, Ladhood and probably others if I thought about it.

[neveragain]

proposing and a big grand wedding just being 'the done thing', lads nights out to the big provincial club throwing as many shots down you as possible, Pam's middle-class snobbery...

These are all things that still exist though... so I don't really see them as dated. And as for dull, are you saying that people's lives somehow aren't dull these days?

[BritishHobo]

I can't really articulate my thoughts about this show now; I had to read some of the older threads for catharsis the other day. I initially liked it upon discovering it part way through series 2, and there are several funny moments that still stick in my mind (Bryn's "SURPRISE!", " what time's the EastEnders special on?", Matt Lucas) before it rapidly went downhill in series 3. I'd have to literally steal someone else's words in that it's often quite well-observed, but almost everybody in it is not very likeable. Gavin and Stacey especially, who's grand romantic moments have the hallmarks of an ultimately doomed relationship rather than two people meant to be together.

It feels really dated to me now, much worse than other sitcoms of the time or older. Obviously the soundtrack amplifies that, but a lot of the attitudes and cultural touchstones feel like they all went very out of date within the following few years. For example, proposing and a big grand wedding just being 'the done thing', lads nights out to the big provincial club throwing as many shots down you as possible, Pam's middle-class snobbery, Nuts Magazine... not saying these things don't still happen but these people's lives ultimately feel quite dull, and if there's an upside to the bleak outlook of today perhaps it's that people are questioning their happiness and life choices a bit more. This is reflected in much more accurate and touching portrayals of young life/love/family such as Big Boys, Ladhood and probably others if I thought about it.

Great post - you've absolutely nailed it in their lives being fundamentally dull. As you say, it's not that it never happens anymore, it's just that it wouldn't be seen as such an inevitability the way it is in this. It all happens so quick, but the show doesn't really treat that as odd except in a couple of bits of isolated conflict which are quickly resolved. Instead it's all treated as uplifting and romantic and lovely.

I had similar feelings about the big bleak stag do, but couldn't really verbalise them until reading your post. It feels slightly odd that you have (some of) the cast of the History Boys, but they're just a really unironic gang of interchangable LADS LADS LADS. There's a 'subplot' in the wedding episode where Samuel Anderson shags one of Stacey's mates at the wedding, and there's nothing interesting or funny about it, it just occasionally cuts to a scene of them flirting, and then at the end they're shagging. It's not like the bit in The Office where Finchy is fucking the Welsh woman in the carpark and it feels deliberately bleak. It's just there, as if you're meant to cheer him on. When it cuts back to the lads and the girls in separate groups singing Summer Lovin' to each other, it made me feel like I was at a distant friend's wedding that I really really fucking wanted to leave.

I think that's what gets me about a lot of it, especially the family scenes; it's absolutely spot-on in its observations, but the things it's observing are so mundane that it's tough going. There's a part of it that takes me back to being a kid at family gatherings, and being so bored by the fact that the adults are all talking about which motorway they took, and how busy it was, every time, forever. I've never thought about it before, but it's a show where everyone is always either about to drive somewhere, or getting ready to drive back from somewhere, and they're all talking about it.

I wonder if that's why people find Nessa and Smithy more engaging, because it takes the conformity of the main pair and upends it. Despite the 'families from two worlds' premise, Gavin and Stacey are pretty much exactly the same person - they're both basic bitches. It's more interesting watching Smithy, with all his horrible long-held laddish misogyny and BNP-lite xenophobia towards Wales, gradually warm up to Nessa, who is exactly like him, but in such a different cultural context that it means challenging abandoning all his dull, witless stereotypes about life.

[BritishHobo]

I've just finished series 2, and actually am finding it more interesting because it does confront the fact that Gavin and Stacey have gone for a really traditional relationship arc in a world where it's rapidly outdated. They've got married quick, but unlike in the good old days, they don't have their own house to move immediately into. They have to live with Gavin's parents, with Stacey struggling to find a job, meaning they can't afford to buy (and Gavin doesn't want to rent), and building resentment between them about where they actually want to live.

As with series 1, it's perfectly observed, but of something quite bleak; this time what it's like being in a deeply unhappy relationship and having really horrible, unpleasant arguments in public while everyone else is trying to enjoy themselves. It gets that so spot-on that it's a hard watch.

You can feel the pull towards sitcom wackiness though - towards the end is when the fishing trip goes from a genuinely unpleasant "this uncle and nephew have fucked each other" thing to a big running joke with Dave Coaches dropping clues about the event like "it defies gravity!". And it's the Christmas special that really takes it over the edge and into something a bit more cuddly, where the arguments feel less genuine and more like when the friends on Friends would have arguments.

[Geoffrey]

I did like the original run and I can sort of understand the reason behind the last special but there's not enough reason to re-visit these characters again this soon.

[BritishHobo]

Finished now. I was right on series 3. They mostly strip out the weird bleakness and it becomes the cosy catchphrase-a-thon it's now known as. Matthew Baynton's Deano deserves to be in a better show, without Gavin and Smithy's dull, humourless lad mates.

It's pretty jarring making the ten-year leap to the special. The thing that sticks out most is that Corden seemed to have completely lost any sense of how to play Smithy. The bit near the end when he's playing up a posh, well-spoken persona for his new girlfriend, you can feel those mannerisms bubbling up throughout the episode. A bit like later seasons of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, he looks and sounds too Hollywood, when by all rights he ought to look like a fucking mess.

[purlieu]

There's more than a little of The Office to it, with the observational bleakness gradually eroded in place of unimpressive romcom stuff. I suppose there's a realisation that any hint of mainstream audiences will be tuning in for that stuff so they play up to it, but it's a definite shame.