James Corden, star of Gavin and Stacey, has revealed that the 2019 Christmas cliffhanger episode was on the brink of being abandoned due to difficulties in writing it with co-creator Ruth Jones. The BBC documentary, Gavin and Stacey: A Fond Farewell, provides a comprehensive look at the series, its immense success, the suspenseful ending in 2019, and includes heartfelt farewells from some of its stars.
Ruth, the co-creator, also shares that the much-loved comedy initially had a different title than Gavin and Stacey. In this behind-the-scenes documentary, James, the star and co-creator, revealed how the 2019 Christmas cliffhanger episode almost didn’t happen, reports the Mirror.
When James and Ruth Jones, who also plays ‘Nessa’, began writing it, their initial draft was “awful”. James said: “The 2019 special, I don’t know if people know this, but we gave up on it at one point. We’d written maybe half way through and we read it and we were like ‘this is rubbish, this is awful, it’s terrible’. Like it’s extraordinary how close we were to just…I actually remember saying to each other ‘well thank god we didn’t call the BBC’.”
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The beloved comedy bowed out on Christmas Day
(Image: PA)
He added that after having dinner, he and Ruth decided to give it another shot, and fortunately, their next attempt was significantly better. James said: “I said ‘Look, I think we probably owe it to the show to go back in and talk about why it’s bad and say goodbye to it really.’ We were like two hours from saying goodbye to it and we can never do it again because it isn’t very good.”
Ruth said: “But then we realised – which is true for every episode of Gavin and Stacey – that the reason these people are together is because of Gavin and Stacey, so we realised that the reason it wasn’t working is because there wasn’t anything substantial for them.”
James reflected: “And then that night at 11pm is when we came up with the scene of Stacey keeping hold of the matches and it changed everything.”
The duo also shared the origins of the hit BBC sitcom. Ruth disclosed: “I said let’s write this treatment so we can send it off, it was called It’s My Day, it literally was just about the wedding with lots of these little vignettes.”
James contributed: “We also wrote, really just for us, a backstory for of who they were.”
After pitching the concept to the BBC, they received encouraging feedback but were told there was “no space” for a one-hour comedy special; hence, they were encouraged to develop it into a series. This led to the creation of Gavin and Stacey, which debuted in 2007, quickly establishing itself as a beloved show on TV.
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