Ahead of the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special, Ruth Jones and James Corden have opened up about the little matter of the last-ever episode of Gavin & Stacey.
And Ruth's already warned a fan that there's a chance they might be left feeling 'disappointment' by the end of the long-awaited finale. We, naturally, clutched our peals.
Ruth explained to heatworld, ‘The taxi driver who picked me up from Paddington station just now was like, "Oh my God, I’m so excited about Gavin & Stacey on Christmas Day!" And I said, "Look, you might be disappointed." And the taxi driver said, "No, no, we won’t be."' At this, James looked concerned and said, as if talking to said taxi driver, ‘But you don’t know!’
But it soon became clear that Ruth and James are not only very happy with what they’ve come up with for the 90-minute episode, they’re actually giddy with the excitement of it all, finishing each other's sentences like the best friends they clearly are. Not that it's been an easy process – as they'll go on to explain – to get to this point, where the final episode is about to arrive on BB1 on Christmas Day, five years after the last one. And, of course, that episode ended on a cliffhanger for the ages, when Nessa got down on one knee in the street outside Gwen’s house in Barry and proposed to a shocked, stunned Smithy.
That Christmas Special also catapulted Gavin & Stacey into the record books. What started out as a modest BBC3 series Ruth and James first decided to write 20 years ago, became the highest-rated scripted show of the millennium, with 18.5million viewers watching it that Christmas week in 2019. So, this last-ever episode is basically one of the most anticipated British TV events of all time. No pressure then...
Speaking of the pressure to bring back the British television staple, Ruth told us, 'I think originally we thought we could tell the entire story in that 2019 special, but also for a while we did think, "Why not end it there? Why not end it with the cliffhanger?" Because we’ve always felt that those characters carry on living, even when they’re not on TV, which I know sounds mental. People used to say to me, "Well, you can’t leave it there!" And I’d say, "Why not? Why don’t you imagine whether Smithy said yes or no, and what happened after that?" because there’s nothing wrong in leaving it on that cliffhanger. But then we both changed our minds.'
The Finale airs on BBC1 and iPlayer, Christmas Day, 9pm